Beauvais

2016 was a great year for travel for me. I managed to get to a number of spots in the United States (Hawaii, Los Angeles, Chicago and eastern Ohio); took two European trips to England and France; and added a new continent to my list by spending a week in Ecuador, South America. My last post of 2016 is reserved for a place I've wanted to see for almost 30 years: Beauvais, France. I'll try to be brief but this place was important for me to visit.

The first buildings I ever fell in love with when I was studying architecture in my late teens and early 20s were the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. I found it incredible that men in the Middle Ages were building huge churches out of stone with no calculations or mechanized equipment whatsoever. I also loved that with each subsequent construction project they seemed to push the limits of stone construction further and further. It was like tempting fate.

Of all the cathedrals out there, Beauvais was always my favorite, partly because it was the tallest but partly because here in this small city about an hour and 15 minutes outside of Paris, they tempted fate a little too much and pushed the envelope about as far as it could go and maybe a little further. It's a little bit of a tragic tale, although I didn't really truly understand that until I arrived there this past September.

Looking up at the vaulting of Beauvais Cathedral. You will find nothing higher and Gothic in the world.

Construction of the cathedral at Beauvais (officially the Cathedral of St. Peter, or Pierre if you prefer) began in 1255 and got off to a quick start. It took just 17 years to complete the choir, which at 156 feet tall was the tallest in the world, higher than Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres Cathedral by 41 and 35 feet respectively and 14 feet higher than Cologne's famous cathedral. But the euphoria of building higher than man ever had with this kind of construction came crashing down 12 years after the choir was completed. Literally. Part of the choir had collapsed.

The 1284 collapse was not the only structural failure the cathedral would endure. After repairing the choir (albeit with a bit more structure this time) and finishing the transept over the next 180 years (not a typo - the Hundred Years War interfered with cathedral construction just a bit), the master masons at Beauvais decided to add a central tower that would make the Cathedral the tallest building in the world at the time. But just ten years after they started building the tower in 1573, that collapsed too, taking part of the transept down with it.

Just like that, it was over. It was determined that there were enough funds to repair the transept but there would be no more construction after that. Fini. Toujours.

To this day, the Cathedral is unfinished and it won't ever be completed as envisioned by the masons of Beauvais when they started building. It remains as a transept and choir only, lacking the nave that makes up the bulk of most cathedrals' floor plans. Rather than being cruciform in plan like most Catholic churches, Beauvais is missing the entire lower leg of the cross where the congregation typically sits.

Beauvais Cathedral as seen from the west.

It is no less spectacular for its incomplete state than any other Gothic cathedral I've visited in my life. At least not on the outside. In fact, it's better than any other I've seen. It looks a little strange approaching it from the west because there's a whole piece of what should be there just missing but the verticality and the openness of the walls are spectacular. You can already anticipate the amount of light that is going to be flowing into the church once you enter on the south end of the transept. Not the east end. The south end of the transept.

But when you step inside, things are a little sadder. You can really get a good picture of what the builders all those years ago have created and it doesn't look healthy 400 plus years after they stopped construction.

First of all, I should say standing in this church after all these years of wanting to go was incredible. It really is an amazing space. The height is breathtaking and the walls look way more open inside the church than they do on the exterior, probably because the flying buttresses on the outside of the Cathedral tend to obscure the actual walls of the building.

But the most striking feature of the interior of the Cathedral is not the soaring vaults but the series of wooden braces being used to hold the place together. There are several horizontal trusses spanning across the transept at the north and south ends and there's a huge diagonal structure holding up some of the piers at the northwest corner of the crossing; they've even had to excavate the floor of the cathedral to get enough purchase at ground level to stop this massive construct from slipping.

The south end of the transept.

The northwest corner of the crossing.

Yes, the stained glass is awesome; it shines on the interior walls of the cathedral like some abstract impressionist painting. The openness of the church is incredible too and the height really seems like it is close to God, or must have in the mid-13th century when the choir was first erected. But the introduction of supports to stop the place falling down are unforgettable. In a way, I guess we could have seen this coming; walking back around the west end of the Cathedral after visiting the interior, we noticed metal bars holding the tops of the flying buttresses together. Not as visible as what we found inside, but telling nonetheless.

I hate to appear to end 2016 on a downer note because like I said at the top of this post my travels have taken me to some wonderful places this year. And make no mistake, Beauvais is included among those places. I can't say if Beauvais Cathedral will stand for centuries more or a few decades more or just a few years but I'm glad I made it there this year. I'm also certain if there's a place that can save this church, it's Beauvais, a city which rebuilt itself twice after two German invasions in the twentieth century and a place represented by the salamander, an animal that can regenerate lost limbs. We found gold medallions featuring these amphibians all over the streets of the city and I've included a picture of one as the cover of this post.

My 2016 travels are over but I'll be on my way somewhere else next month. Can't wait to see what I find out there. If they are half as spectacular as this gorgeous old church in Beauvais, I'll be a lucky man.

The east end of Beauvais Cathedral taken from where the nave was supposed to be.

Playing The Silver Ball

One of the things I love most about travel is the way it connects us to experiences that we just can't find by staying at home. It might be an afternoon spent in a beer garden in Germany or an hour walking through a centuries old cathedral in Ecuador or getting hopelessly lost in the souks in Marrakech. The memories that come from being there are indelibly connected to a particular time and place forever. This statement applies even if there's something intentionally or accidentally almost the same in the United States. It's the details or the sounds or the smells that can't all be matched exactly.

One of the enduring images of France from my first four trips as a kid or adult to the countryside or Paris is seeing Frenchmen playing pétanque, a deceivingly simple game where two or more players throw slightly larger than fist sized metal balls towards a smaller wooden ball known as the cochonnet ("piglet" in French, but also sometimes called a jack). The goal is to get your balls closer to the cochonnet than any other player either by skillfully throwing or rolling your ball so it ends up right next to the smaller ball or by rudely knocking your opponents' balls out of the way. Think bocce if you grew up in America with that game; it's close enough for this post.

The memory of pétanque in my mind's eye before I left for Paris this past September was of old men in gorgeous parks or on rough gravel paths slowly tossing balls to beat their opponent in the middle of the day to pass the time. And because it was so stuck in my head as something so completely French, I knew I had to find a way to play on this trip. So forget about the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and all the other top ten tourist destinations. For me, I had to play some pétanque on this Paris trip before I came back home.

Pétanque at the Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman amphitheater in Paris' 5e Arrondissement. Appropriate, I guess.

Pétanque is not a complicated sport. All you really need to play a game is at least four balls that can be thrown reasonably well, a smaller ball to throw towards and a flat or almost flat surface on which the balls will roll a bit. Because it's so uncomplicated, it probably should come as no surprise that the origins of the game can be traced back a long way. Like to ancient Rome. The game was imported to France by Roman soldiers, who played a game similar to the French game today. In between subjugating less militarily sophisticated peoples, I guess.

The real invention of the game we know as pétanque today, however, can be traced back to 1910 in a small town near Marseilles in southern France. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a popular game in that area called jeu provençal, a ball game similar to the one the ancient Romans played where the participants took three steps before throwing the balls towards the jack. As luck would have it (for those of us who are fans of the modern game), there was a player in southern France at that time who was unable to take the requisite three steps due to severe arthritis so the rule was changed to require the feet of the participants be stationary before starting the throwing motion.

It caught on. And the game took its name from the throwing posture (pétanque roughly translates to "feet planted" in French). I suppose the rule change opened the sport to a whole new generation of participants. These new players would be the old men I envision in my childhood memories. I'm not judging here; pretty soon I'll be one of those guys, I guess.

The rules of the game today are substantially similar to the first time it was played just ten years into the last century. Play starts in a circle drawn in the dirt to denote the throwing point (they actually make prefabricated circles to place on the ground now) where the players will stand. The cochonnet is tossed first to establish the target and each contestant takes turns throwing a single steel ball towards the mark. In games with teams of one or two participants, three balls per player are typically used; where teams of three participate, just two balls per player are involved.

Once the initial one ball per person is thrown, the order of play is determined by distance from the jack. Those furthest from the cochonnet toss their next ball first; those with good aim or good luck go last. The game is played this way until all balls are in play. Points are awarded for the balls closest to the jack. One point is awarded for the closest ball; if a player has multiple balls closer than their opponents, then they can pick up more than one point in that particular round. Repeat this until a player reaches 13 and the game's over. Don't know who's closest? Don't worry. Most serious pétanque players carry some sort of tape measure.

I couldn't leave France this time without playing this game. Just couldn't.

A foursome playing pétanque in the middle of the day in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Once I'd made my decision to play pétanque on this trip, I was faced with the dilemma of how exactly to do that. I didn't own a pétanque set. I also didn't particularly want to just go to a Parisian department store, buy a few balls and start playing in some random park by ourselves. I really wanted to play with someone who lived in Paris but I wasn't sure I could just walk up to some random Frenchman in a park and challenge him to a game or two.

I thought therefore that I'd try to find a pétanque tour which in my mind would involve some discussion of the history of the sport followed by a spirited game or two with someone with a deep understanding of the nuances of what is obviously on the surface an extremely straightforward pastime. There had to be some company that offered something like that, right? 

Well, maybe not so much.

I found one: a company called Localers, who offers seemingly every kind of tour you can imagine in Paris, from the traditional (Versailles Palace & Gardens Tour) to the very decidedly non-traditional (Pokémon Hunt in Paris). Hidden amongst this range of experiences was a couple of hours pétanque game for out of towners. I had to do this.

Unfortunately for me, Localers apparently only operates this tour on Thursdays and Fridays in the summer and our arrival in Paris on Saturday, September 17 put us exactly one calendar day after their last tour of the summer. But all was not lost. After a few emails, they agreed to move their last tour of 2016 back a day to our arrival day of Saturday. I appreciated this. Pétanque was on!!

The Cour d'Honneur of the Palais-Royal. A perfect place to play pétanque.

Enter Corey, an expatriate American and our pétanque buddy for the afternoon. We met Corey just outside the Grand Hôtel du Louvre in Paris' First Arrondissement and made our way circuitously to the gardens of the nearby Palais-Royal, a seventeenth century mansion in the center of the city built by Cardinal Richelieu who served as a chief advisor to King Louis XIII. The Palais was later the home of Louis XIV who became known as the Sun King. The central gardens of the Palais (or the Cour d'Honneur) is where we'd spend a little more than an hour playing pétanque.

The Cour d'Honneur of course was not the public garden that it is today when it was built in the 1630s but instead the private domain of some of the richest and most powerful men in France. It remains today much the way it was first conceived, with a spectacular fountain in the center of the yard surrounded by sculpted hedgerows and allées of identical trees spaced rigorously and regularly to define wide paths for walking and talking or just playing a game of pétanque.

Our route from the Grand Hôtel du Louvre to the Palais-Royal that afternoon took us through a number of Paris' covered arcades in the immediate area before stopping in to the L'Avant Premiére, a bistro just about a block north of the entrance to the garden. This would be our final stop to pick up one more thing to make our pétanque experience completely authentic: a stiff drink in a to go cup. Now whether the alcohol makes the experience more enjoyable or gets you to play better or has any positive effect is debatable but (a) tradition is tradition and (b) I've never been one to turn down a drink when offered so I was all in.

All you need to play pétanque in Paris: a pair of steel balls and a cup of liquid courage.

Unfortunately for me, the drink of choice when hanging out in a French park playing pétanque is a pastis, an anise flavored drink consisting of a couple of shots of anise liquor mixed with water in a one to five ratio. If there's anything I dislike more to eat or drink than anise, I don't know what it would be. I absolutely hate this stuff. But when I wrote tradition is tradition in the previous paragraph, I meant it and I've never been one to back down from a challenge so I left the L'Avant Premiere with a cloudy cup of anise flavored nastiness ready to go.

So after a half hour or so walk, some conversation about what it's like to live in Paris today and carrying an open cup of alcohol into a public park in a city without an open container law, we were ready to play. We drew a line in the dirt, divvied up the set of eight silver balls (in four different patterns so you can tell which balls belong to whom) between the three of us (two each as per the rules) and were ready to toss the cochonnet for the first time. All this in the courtyard of a place which was built more than 100 years before the country where I live gained its independence. Pretty heady stuff.

Now I get that playing this game is something that millions of people have done in their lives and it really should be no big deal but I have to tell you that throwing that first heavy silver ball towards the jack for me was incredible. It made me feel that I was taking part in something uniquely French that I'd never experienced before. Especially since I rarely take the time to slow down on vacation and just stop and play for a bit. I can now say that I've played pétanque in Paris and that makes me feel connected to that city and country in a way that I wasn't three months ago.

Chasing the cochonnet with two other balls in play.

There's definitely an art to this game. Tossing the ball overhand with a slight upward flick of the wrist to put a little backspin on the trajectory was essential. It stopped the balls from rolling a long distance. Getting good at striking your opponents' balls to knock them out of the way also seems like a critical skill to master. Making contact is easy. Doing it in a way that gets your ball closest to the target is a little trickier.

Over the week we were in Paris we watched men and women old and young play pétanque a few times. We saw people solely practicing knocking another ball out of the way and we saw a variety of throwing styles from the traditional standing upright to more of a crouching or squatting position. Everyone who we watched play seemed to have their own custom set of three balls with a cloth at hand to wipe and polish them after every round and at least one player had a measure of some sort to determine the winner. This stuff is important in France. 

We even made our way to a pétanque store later in the week to check out the prices of a set of balls. You can easily drop close to 300 Euros (about $315 as of the date of this post) for a set of three balls. They are available in leisure and competition varieties and come in slightly different sizes, weights and hardnesses to allow you to maximize your advantages over your fellow players. Accessories such as cleaning cloths, the cochonnet, a carrying case and some sort of measuring device are extra, of course.

Corey doing the math on a close point. Can't guess on this stuff. Too much at stake.

We played a single game to 13, as we should. It took us probably slightly more than an hour and we actually stayed pretty competitive, losing to Corey 13-9-8. Although admittedly Corey went Inigo Montoya on us and played left handed to make things closer. While we played, we talked about the culture of the game today and sipped on our steadily diluting anise flavored drinks. And believe me the taste of a pastis definitely gets better as the ice melts. It was almost tolerable by the end of the game.

Pétanque today is not a sport reserved for old men in striped shirts and berets with nothing to do to pass the time. As we found out by walking around the city for the week after we played, the game is played by all ages and both sexes. Corey described to us how Gen Xers and Yers are adopting the game, often while wearing flannel shirts and growing the longest beard possible. There are even pétanque bars in a few spots in the city for those who want a little more than one pastis with their game.

I love connecting with a place on a different level than the typical tourist when I travel. For me, tossing a couple of sliver balls around and talking to someone who lives in the city for two hours or so was the perfect way to establish a deeper connection. It helped us understand and appreciate Paris and France a little better and deeper than we ever had before. 

If things ever get too much for me to handle in this world, I'm buying a one way ticket to Paris, dropping $300 or so on some pétanque balls and whiling away the hours in some Parisian park sipping a drink and chasing the cochonnet every afternoon. Vive le France! This was incredible!

Too lazy or immobile to pick up your pétanque balls? Don't worry, they make magnets on strings for that.

Who's Buried In Paris?

The simple answer to the question that is the title of this post is "a whole lot of people." The detailed answer for me is a whole lot more fun.

Paris is one of the great cities in the world to spend time roaming around cemeteries. Maybe that sounds like a strange vacation activity to some people but for me, there are people buried in Paris who I want to say hi to, even if they maybe can't really hear me (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether they can or not). There are people buried all over France's capital city but the best ones are in the graveyards. I mean sure they have amazing churches where you can get within sight of Victor Hugo's or Napoleon's tomb or actually touch the final resting place of Marie Curie, but the real fun is spent in two of the world's greatest burial grounds: Père Lachaise (founded in 1804) in Paris' 20th Arrondissement and Montparnasse (founded 20 years later) in the city's 14th.

If you decide to go looking for someone in each of these wonderful burial grounds, chances are they are located on the maps that these places make available to tourists. You can find Père Lachaise's online and you can borrow a laminated hard copy of Montparnasse's when you show up there (a copy is also available online here). Want to know where Jean-Paul Sartre, Oscar Wilde, Camille Saint-Saëns or Edith Piaf ended up? They are all on the maps along with 169 other folks. But once you get there, there's no guarantee they are easy to find. They aren't marked with big neon signs or even small non-neon signs. There's some fun to be had hunting among the rows of tombs to find whomever you are looking for. Just a warning, though: you may come away disappointed. Some of these graves are overgrown with moss or other plants and you may have to leave without spotting your favorite author or composer or artist. We looked for Guy de Maupassant in vain in Montparnasse and eventually just gave up.

Now I didn't go to Paris to see the graves of Sartre or Wilde or Saint-Saëns or Piaf. I wanted to visit some folks more famous than these four and some who were a whole lot more obscure. And we had to get some significant help to find two of them I wanted to find. Unfortunately, there was nobody right there to help with Maupassant. Below are my top ten. I hope you will make your own and find your own special meaning in these two amazing places.

10. André Citroën (1878-1935), Montparnasse

I wrote on this blog years ago that I'm not much of a cars guy. And it's true, I'm really not. But I'm sort of fascinated by these little cars that roam around Europe that you can't get in the United States. And Citroëns, the namesake automobile of the guy that we found buried along the main path on the east side of Montparnasse Cemetery (Montparnasse is split in two halves by rue Émile Richard), are little cars that are all over the streets of Paris.

Citroën, whose name means "lemon" in Dutch (yep that's just a random note) started his automobile company in 1919 after supplying armaments to the French forces during World War I. His main claim to fame as a pioneer was as the inventor of the double helical gears, which apparently were revolutionary and which I'm not even going to attempt to explain here because I can't really begin to understand this stuff. After all, I'm not a cars guy. If we'd have found Maupassant, Citroën would probably have gotten bumped off this list. We didn't, so he's on it.

9. Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891), Père Lachaise

If there's one man responsible for the character of much of the city of Paris today, it's Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the Emperor Napoleon III's hand picked guy to expand the city limits and redefine the nature of monuments and parks in the city. If you find yourself walking through a park in Paris or down some grand boulevard that connects one magnificent structure to another, odds are Haussmann is responsible for it in part or in whole.

Under his command, workers in Paris spent from 1854 to 1870 building parks, train stations, markets and civic monuments and creating wide streets to connect them all logically.  Of course, widening streets involved wholesale demolition of large sections of the city, displacing about a quarter of a million business people and residents alike without any sort of argument or appeal process. I can imagine Haussmann was not a guy to be trifled with and I'm not sure I would have liked him, but there's no doubt I enjoy what he did some 150 years or so later. He's buried in the Haussmann family crypt near the main entrance of Père Lachaise.

8. Charles Garnier (1825-1898), Montparnasse

One of the signature works of Haussmann's rebuild of Paris was the new Opéra in the city's 9th Arrondissement. Charles Garnier was the architect of that building and it was by far the piece de resistance of his career. In fact, if he hadn't designed that building, I wouldn't have looked for him this past September.

Now I'm an architect by profession so wouldn't it be natural to include Garnier a little higher up the list? Well, yes. But, no. Despite the fact that I love the Paris Opéra building and so desperately want to see a real opera there one day (note: I WILL be going back to Paris at some point), the design of the building itself, and probably Garnier himself, was pretty backward looking considering it was designed and constructed at the dawn of the industrial revolution. He could have done so much more with changing technology and industrial production techniques considering it was the most important commission in the city at that time in history. Because he didn't, he's at number eight on my list.

Garnier's grave is a little difficult to find. It's not on the edge of one of the sections of the cemetery and takes some hunting. We almost gave up here but ultimately obviously didn't need to since we snapped the pic above.

7. Stéphane Grapelli (1908-1997), Père Lachaise

6. Laurent Fignon (1960-2010), Père Lachaise

Stéphane Grapelli and Laurent Fignon are both in the columbarium of Père Lachaise and can be located by knowing the location number of the boxes that contain their ashes. Grapelli is number 417; Fignon is number 1445. They are placed here together on this list not because they are both in the columbarium but because I went to seek each of these guys out not for myself but because of my dad.

My dad has a few great loves in life. One of those is jazz and another is cycling. Grapelli covers the jazz side of things and Fignon takes care of the cycling. For this post anyway.

Stéphane Grapelli is notable as a jazz man not only because he played the violin which is typically not considered a jazz instrument but also because he founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt, who invented a uniquely French style of jazz called gyspy jazz or jazz manouche. Grapelli and Reinhardt played together from 1931 (before the Quintette) until 1939 at the outbreak of World War II and then again briefly after the War. Jazz manouche still exists in Paris; we tried to find it with little success. Maybe next time...

Laurent Fignon, who died all too soon at the age of 50, was a two time winner of the Tour de France bicycle race in 1983 and 1984, an annual contest which my dad spends three weeks each July watching pretty much daily. Fignon almost won a third in 1989, losing to Greg LeMond by just eight seconds, the closest Tour de France ever held. I have more interest in cycling than jazz; I used to go watch bike races with my dad in the late 1970s in England and I keep track of the Tour de France each year because of him but I just haven't gotten into jazz at home yet (although I can listen to it live). Because of this, Fignon finishes ahead of Grapelli.

5. Gustave Doré (1832-1883), Père Lachaise

By and large, I hated English class in high school. To me, this is a little bit odd because I like writing and I love reading when I find the time to do it today. Maybe it was the subject matter or the forced nature of learning stuff or having to appreciate everything on a deeper level with foreshadowing and symbolism and man vs. man/nature/himself and all sorts of stuff like that. Above all else in English class, I hated poetry because I just didn't (and still don't) get it.

But there were things we were forced to read in high school that I liked and one of them surprisingly enough was a poem: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I liked this work so much that my mom bought me an illustrated version of it for Christmas or my birthday (as I recall it) one year. The illustrator of that book was Gustave Doré and ever since I received that book from my mom, I've loved his work.

Doré illustrated a number of famous works of literature in a variety of styles. His works for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are dark and cold and creepy and filled with eerie symbolism. They are perfect to look at while reading along and they reinforce the loneliness and desperation that the mariner is feeling while searching for his salvation. Since the day I cracked that book my mom gave me, I've held Gustave Doré in high esteem.

Doré's resting place proved incredibly difficult to find. We spent a good 15 minutes or so going back and forth along the rows of graves in the section of Père Lachaise where the map showed Doré buried. While we searched there was a guy obviously watching us which was honestly a little concerning until he asked us who we were looking for and took us right to Doré's grave. I suppose he was just there to help us although we didn't know it. Good Samaritan I guess. Sometimes you need people like that when you are traveling.

4. Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), Père Lachaise

If I'm not much of a jazz fan (and I'm not), I'm only probably slightly more into classical music. But whereas I couldn't express a preference for jazz beyond a particular style (partial to dixieland and blues, if you allow me to call blues jazz), when it comes to classical music, I definitely have composers I love. Ludwig van Beethoven is definitely my number one guy. Second is probably Gioachino Rossini. Both composed instantly recognizable works which are loud and forceful. They hit you over the head so to speak, which I sometimes need.

If you claim you don't know any of Rossini's work, you are probably wrong. Think the Lone Ranger theme (Rossini's William Tell overture) or the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets that horrendous haircut (Rossini's Barber of Seville is the basis for that episode and the music playing is from that opera). Rossini's overtures have appeared in Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry cartoons and his Thieving Magpie plays in the background of one scene in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. You might not be able to name the work, but you know Rossini. Trust me.

Rossini was Italian and spent his early years rising to fame writing in that country. But in 1824 he moved to Paris and spent the rest of his life (44 years) living in France. When he died he was buried in Père Lachaise just two spots up the hill from Georges-Eugène Haussmann. His tomb (shown above with the name partially obscured by the trees) still stands in Père Lachaise but his remains are no longer there. They were moved to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence nine years after his death.

3. Jim Morrison (1943-1971), Père Lachaise

I first visited Père Lachaise in mid-December 1994 on the first trip of my life to Paris. It was cold and there's not a whole lot of daylight there at that time of the year and the cemetery seemed completely empty that day. I remember seeing not a single soul within the graveyard walls that day until I got to Jim Morrison's grave. Where I found about eight people milling about just looking at the grave. I have to believe Morrison's grave is the most popular grave in Père Lachaise.

Jim Morrison, of course, was the lead singer of The Doors. He's buried in Père Lachaise because he died in Paris from what was documented as heart failure at the age of 27. Morrison had taken a leave of absence from The Doors after the release of what would end up being their last studio album, L.A. Woman. You won't be able to really miss Morrison's grave. It's one of the only ones (or perhaps THE only one) in the whole cemetery which is fenced off. By the orderly way stuff is arranged on top of the headstone, it doesn't look like the fence is effective in keeping all of the people away from the grave. It wasn't this way in 1994 and it's too bad they have to do this.

I like The Doors a lot. I have all their albums and I think Morrision Hotel is one of the best albums ever made. But Morrison lands at number three on my list because there are two others that I would visit before Morrison in these two cemeteries.

2. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), Montparnasse 

I've written a couple of times in this blog about my love for the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi is the man responsible for taking Lady Liberty from an idea to a reality. And yes, I realize the photograph of Bartholdi's grave is the worst one on this post. His grave is the floating shadowed angel in the center of the photograph.

While Bartholdi was an accomplished sculptor who executed a number of commissions throughout his life, nothing comes close to the fame afforded to him by the two decades plus he spent working on Liberty Enlightening the World. If he hadn't been involved with the Statue of Liberty, I would have had no idea who he was and wouldn't have sought out his grave. I love pretty much everything about the Statue. It's one of my favorite works of anything in the world and I love that I was able to stand near what used to be Bartholdi.

1. Auguste Perret (1874-1954), Montparnasse

Everyone I have written about so far in this post I was able to find either by looking at the official cemetery maps or by searching on the internet. I could not, however, find Auguste Perret. So I went to Paris with just a hope that someone, somewhere would be able to point me in the direction of his grave. Lucky for me, there's an office at the main entrance of Montparnasse which can help.

Auguste Perret is one of my favorite architects of all time. His most famous works were produced during the time between the start of the industrial revolution and the blossoming of full blown Modernism with a capital M. It is my favorite period of architectural history because the struggle these architects were having coming to grips with new materials and methods of manufacturing produced amazing works of architecture. Perret pushed the envelope on concrete construction, one of those processes that the Romans seemed to have mastered but which we as people totally forgot after the collapse of the Roman Empire. If I had a Mount Rushmore of architects, Perret would be one of my first choices along with the Dutch architect H.P. Berlage and two others, one of whom would likely be Frank Lloyd Wright although I'd have to put more thought into that one than I have writing this blog post.

My search for Perret's final resting place the day we visited Montparnasse started with a "Nous cherchons Auguste Perret." The rejoinder as I remember it was "Is he famous?" and yes, it was in English. After a "yes" and an "I've never heard of him" the search was on. By the time my conversation with the man in the cemetery office was over, I had a map to Perret's grave and a promise that he would always remember Perret from that point forward. In case anyone else out there is ever looking for Perret, I'm posting the map at the bottom of this post.

The map got me to approximately the right spot and it took less than five minutes to find the grave, which turned out to be the family grave of Perret's wife, although I noted Perret got top billing. This find meant something to me. I've always been someone who has had heroes and Perret is one of the very few architects that fall into that category. I paused standing at his tomb and let him know that he was one of my favorites and a source of inspiration. He was one of the only two graves I talked to in Paris (along with Bartholdi). Hopefully that doesn't make me too weird. 

Notwithstanding our failed attempt to find Maupassant, roaming around these two cemeteries was one of the best things we did in Paris. There are some people buried here who have changed my life in some small way and so finding where they ended up meant something to me. The other great thing about doing this? It's free. Even if you just want to walk around and look for a few minutes rather than seek out someone specific, I'd highly recommend some time in one or more of these two spots. You might find someone with a personal connection to you. I never imagined I'd find as many as I did.

The map to Auguste Perret's grave. Area 27. 12 graves from the south edge; 14 graves from the west.

City Of Light

Paris is often referred to as the City of Light, a reference possibly to its role in the Age of Enlightenment or more probably because it was one of the first cities in the world to adopt the use of gas lighting city-wide, thus making it literally lighted. The first patent for a gas lamp was issued in 1799 and by 1820 Paris had made the decision to install gas street lighting throughout the city, phasing it in over the next few decades. This technology transformed the city at night by the mid-nineteenth century.

We made plans to do a number of different things at night on our recent trip to Paris, including eating out, going to the symphony at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées and spending a couple of nights in some jazz clubs throughout the city. On our nights without plans, we made a point to pay tribute to Paris' name as the City of Light and make our way to a monument in the city, see how it was illuminated at night and snap a quick picture before heading home and to bed. This post is a result of those nightly sojourns. All photographs were snapped with my iPhone and I think some turned out pretty well.

Eiffel Tower

The famous french writer Guy de Maupassant used to say that he liked to eat at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower because it was the only spot in the city where he couldn't see the Tower. We took a cue from Maupassant on this trip and deliberately did not visit the city's most famous monument. But we couldn't resist taking a Metro ride to the Trocadéro station to get a glimpse of the Tower at night.

The best place to see the Eiffel Tower is across the Seine to the north right between the two wings of the Palais de Chaillot. Take a quick walk from the Metro; dodge between the street vendors selling miniature lighted Eiffel Towers and other things you don't need; and you'll find yourself (likely with a hundred or so other people there to see the same thing) gazing right down the Champs de Mars where the 1889 Exposition Universelle was held. The last remaining survivor from that fair 127 years ago is the almost 1,000 foot high tower designed by Gustave Eiffel which is directly in front of you. The Tower is spectacular at night but getting a great picture with a simple camera is somewhat difficult given the distance and the absolute contrast between the lighted structure and the dark sky behind.

Paris Opéra

If I were to ever have a bucket list (and I won't ever), seeing an opera in the what is now called the Palais Garnier (but which I will forever refer to as simply the Paris Opera) would be on it. And not just any performance; something by Puccini or Rossini would have to do it for me. On this trip, I struck out. But I did stop by the building at night to see what it looked like in the lights of Paris.

The architect Charles Garnier was awarded the commission for the Opéra in 1861 after a seven month long public competition process. The building, which Garnier dubbed Second Empire style, took more than 13 years to design and build and opened on December 12, 1874. To me, it is THE classic opera house in the world and served as the setting for Gaston Leroux's novel (and I guess Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical) The Phantom of the Opera.

Of the five spots we went to snap some nighttime pics, the Opéra was probably the least impressive from a photography standpoint. Sure the building is lit, but it's not spectacular. But the main issue with getting a great picture at night is that to get far enough away to get the entire front face of the building in the frame requires shooting it across a minimum of about three lanes of traffic. That might be overcome if the dome of the building, which is one of its more impressive features, were illuminated but it's not. Ultimately, for a theatrical performance house, it's not lit very theatrically.

Musée du Louvre

When Louis XIV moved the royal residence of the king of France from Paris to Versailles, the former residence, the Louvre Palace, became a place to display the French royalty's art collection. Turns out that function stuck. Today the Musée du Louvre is the world's second most visited museum in the world (after the Palace Museum in China). Just like the Eiffel Tower, we tried to stay away from the Louvre but the lure of cutting the line with our Paris Museum Pass and fighting our way through the crowds to see the Mona Lisa was just too much. And yes, that's all we did here. The art for me is from the wrong period; give me 20th Century all the way!

The main entrance to the museum is through the 1989 mostly underground addition to the Museum designed by world famous architect I.M. Pei and the 68 foot high glass pyramid that forms the centerpiece of that design now serves as a magnificent front door. The pyramid caused a lot of folks a good deal of consternation when it was proposed. I visited the Louvre for the first time in 1994 and instantly fell in love. The placement of this object in the open sided court of the former Palace seems so delicate and light compared to the rest of the building.

We found the pyramid to be lit in a gorgeous purple color at night and we could get close enough to photograph it quite impressively. It probably helped that it wasn't quite fully dark when we arrived; you can see the cloudy almost night sky in the background behind the pyramid. I tried taking photographs both frontally and at an angle but found the straight ahead shot of the pyramid focused on the main entrance facade to work the best; I love how the dome of the old Palace building fits into the top of the pyramid perfectly.

Notre-Dame de Paris

You can blame this entire post on this one photograph. We didn't plan on making nightly trips out to monuments in the city before we arrived in Paris. In fact, we didn't even consider it when we got there. It was only after we decided to take a walk one night over to the Île de la Cité to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame and stuck around long enough to see the lights turned on that we first got this idea.

Of the five buildings we visited at night, Notre-Dame de Paris is clearly the oldest. In fact, with its construction starting in 1163 (!!!), it's older than the other four buildings in this post combined. This is the first time in three visits to Paris that I didn't set foot inside the Cathedral and yes, just like the Louvre (which we didn't resist enough) and the Eiffel Tower, that was intentional. This trip was about exploring Paris a little bit off the beaten path. A little bit, not a lot.

The picture of Notre-Dame de Paris is probably the best photograph I took while in Paris. We spent about an hour or so looking at the west facade of the church while the sun sunk behind us and the lights came on, illuminating the main elevation of the building slowly at first while the lights warmed up and then ultimately in a warm glow after about 20 to 30 minutes. The setting sun got us a bright light blue sky to offset the bright yellow Cathedral wall while a number of people like us stood watching the night descend in the unlit plaza.

Sacré-Coeur

On our first full day in Paris, we climbed as far up the dome of Sacré-Coeur, the late 19th/early 20th century Catholic Church, as they would allow us to go. On our last full day in Paris, we returned to the highest point in the city of Paris where the church sits to see what the place looks like at night. The result is above. 

Sacré-Coeur looks old but it's not. Not by Paris standards, anyway. It was erected from 1875 to 1914 to commemorate the French defeat at the hands of the Prussians (read: Germans) during the Franco-Prussian War. Does it seem odd to build a massive church to commemorate a lost war? It did to me too but apparently the Church thought it appropriate to blame the loss to the Prussians on the moral decline of the French in the approximately 100 years since the French Revolution. The church, I guess, was to remind the Parisians that God was watching. The Germans, of course, would be back twice in the next 70 years.

The stairs leading up to the front doors of Sacré-Coeur are apparently a popular place to sit and watch the sun set. Unfortunately for us, we arrived just about the time when night fell after an excellent meal of duck confit at the nearby Au Soleil de Montmartre restaurant. As a result, it looks like there's some sketchy mob waiting to storm the church. Other than the crowd (and the tree at the left of the frame, I guess) I like this picture. You can see the detail in the church's facade and I like the splash of muted color in the copper statues and the red banners. It's no picture of Notre-Dame de Paris, but I like it all the same. It was a good spot to spend some time on our last night before heading home. 

These nightly sojourns were a fun way to get out and see things in an almost totally spontaneous way. It was such a good idea, I'll probably make a list next time before I go. :)

Liberté Égalité Fromagerie

Charles de Gaulle, the French General and President, once famously uttered the words "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?" The first thing I said when I booked my airfare to Paris earlier this year was "I'm going to eat so much cheese!" I consider my quote just as valuable as de Gaulle's. Take that as you will.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle airport (funnily enough) outside Paris at about 7:30 am on a Saturday morning this past September after an overnight, non-stop flight from Dulles airport near my home in northern Virginia. About four hours later I was strolling down the rue Moffetard with a baguette in one hand and a crottin of goat cheese in the other experiencing a kind of bliss that only things like English beer and French cheese can bring to me. This is a kind of heaven on Earth experience I love every time I do it. I know it will never get old.

I believe every trip to Paris or France should involve cheese. And not just a nibble after dinner or a walk around a grocery store or fromagerie picking up some samples and popping them in your mouth to distract yourself. I mean like whole meals of the stuff with several different varieties, preferably with a fresh crusty baguette, although honestly I consider the bread optional. It definitely helps with blue cheese though; offsets the salt in some varieties very well.

We designed our cheese experience in Paris a few weeks before we set off on this trip. We allowed ourselves to wing it a little bit, figuring we'd run into one or two or forty or fifty fromageries just walking around at breakfast or lunchtime (we did). But we also signed up for a cheese tasting since I'd never done that before in Paris and we circled on a map a couple of what were allegedly the best of the best merchants in the city to seek out a particular kind of cheese: young raw cow's milk (read: unpasteurized) cheeses that had been aged less than 60 days.

Why this specific type of cheese? Well quite simply because you can't get it in the United States. It's banned. It has been since 2004. The Food and Drug Administration has determined that there are just too darned many bacteria living in cheese made from unpasteurized milk and so they prohibit the importation and sale of such cheeses right after they are made. 60 days later is fine, but not 59 or less. Go figure. And hold that thought. We'll come back to these later.

Part of the cheese selection at Chez Virginie in Montmartre.

First setting foot inside a Parisian fromagerie (or cheese shop; fromage is French for cheese) is a magical experience. It's not like heading down to Whole Foods to buy a wedge of gruyere. If you are lucky, you will be faced with every shape and size and color of cheese known to man and a lot of it will probably be unknown to you. Sure there are some familiar things like wheels of brie or camembert and maybe some sort of cheddar and some logs of chèvre. But there will also likely be aged bright orange hard cheese, cheese wrapped in clear film to prevent it from running away, small cylinders or cones or donuts of whitish looking things (hint: it's cheese) covered in what looks like some sort of mold (it is); and maybe even some things that more resemble scotch eggs than what we think of as cheese. Don't be afraid. It's really good!

And the smells will be incredible. I know it's funky when you first walk in but there's a freshness and sourness and tang and overall cheesiness to assault your senses which is wonderful. Faced with that smell and the sight of the whole array of different shapes and sizes, you know this is going to be good. Some fromageries are set up with all the cheese on one side of the shop; the most fun ones have it on both walls and the back of the store meaning you are literally surrounded with the stuff. Then you can truly feel like you are in cheese heaven.

The magic for me started that first morning in Paris. We stayed this trip on rue Monge in the Quartier Latin and as soon as we had a quick nap, we walked a few blocks west to rue Moffetard, a sort of all day, everyday (well, except Monday) open air market featuring creperies (lots of them), bars (lots of those too), boulangeries (bread shops) and of course a fromagerie or two. I just picked some cheese that looked like nothing I could get in the United States and just started eating and walking. This to me is the best way to start. Don't get something that looks familiar. Take a chance and get something different. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Now, trial and error might work on day one, but cheese week in Paris this time around for me needed some structure, so four days and two meals of only cheese and bread later, we arrived at Parole de Fromagers, a cheese merchant right near the Marché des Enfants Rouge (the oldest covered market in the city of Paris) to take our experience to the next level.

Parole de Fromagers is not just a cheese shop. They are actually cheese agers or what is known in France as an affineur. What this means is they are allowed to age the cheeses they get from cheesemakers to fundamentally change the flavor. They essentially take off the "best by" date and guarantee the quality of the cheeses based on their own aging techniques. We stopped into their aging refrigerator in their sixteenth century cellar right when we got there. What we saw there might make the FDA shudder: cheeses stored openly in a tight room wth air directed over the top of them; cheeses buried under straw or with pieces of straw inside them; and cheeses with either patches or entire shells of greenish blue glistening or powdery mold. To me it looked amazing.

But we didn't come to Paris to watch cheeses age; let's get to the good stuff. Our tasting guide that day was Pierre, Parole de Fromager's in house aging expert with a little wine knowledge on the side gained from his generations old family winemaking business. Cool stuff, folks. Pierre taught us that day how to taste cheeses, which is something I will never think about in quite the same way again.

Pierre Brisson telling us all about how to taste and eat cheese.

When we finally sat down at the table, in front of us were seven different pieces of cheese and sure enough one of them was wrapped in plastic to keep its shape. And yes, it did start running as soon as the plastic was removed. We started with the mildest tasting, a sharp goat cheese aged in their cellar with a strong hint of mushrooms (and thus covered with a blue-green powdery mold), and worked our way to the strongest tasting, a salty bleu d'Ecosse from the southwest of France which definitely needed to be eaten in quantity with the nearby baguette. This mild to strong technique is the way I've always tasted beer; going the other way doesn't allow you to taste the milder stuff properly.

I won't give a blow by blow of our experience but I will cover the highlights. The tasting method we were taught involved sight, smell and taste. After being taught how to cut cheese properly (rind to rind to get all the flavor profiles in a single cut), we started our experience by inspecting both the rind and the paste (the inside of the cheese or pretty much just the cheese) to observe the texture of each before smelling each component of the cheese individually. When tasting, we were told to spread the cheese around our mouths with our tongues and then breathe in and out through our noses while holding our tongues away from the roofs of our mouths. Sound like some hocus pocus? It generally worked, even for me with my limited palate. You really could taste the cheese better this way.

Some other highlights of the individual cheeses? Pierre showed us how the shop makes the aged cheeses more appealing to the customer by tapping on the first goat cheese crottin; he essentially made it rain with mold onto the table. Less mold = more appealing. Unsettling perhaps but we ate every morsel of that stuff. We tasted a young raw cow's milk brie (we'll get to the raw cow's milk thing I promise) where the smelling really helped; the aroma of cauliflower and ammonia helped us understand the first wonderful bite but this was definitely something to be taken in moderation. By the fourth of fifth bite all you could taste was ammonia. This was the only cheese our group did not finish.

We also ate a Beaufort d'Été, a yellow cow's milk cheese (think cow when you see yellow) which was buttery and fruity and overall just the picture perfect cartoon-like taste of cheese, and a washed rind cheese that we ate with a spoon (this was the runny one). As crazy as it sounds, we discovered during the smelling portion on this one aromas of yeast and hot chocolate. I'm not kidding. I'm not saying the cheese tasted like hot chocolate because it was fairly mild and creamy but it definitely smelled like hot chocolate. We ate this cheese with a sweet red wine that made both the wine and cheese taste better. We also found out that eating it with bread destroyed the taste. The baguette tasted and acted just like a sponge inside your mouth. Yuck!

I'm not usually the kind of guy who goes in for this sophisticated tasting notes thing but I'm telling you Pierre opened up my eyes that day. It was the cauliflower, ammonia and hot chocolate that got me. For better or worse.

The 24 month aged Comte in Fromagerie Laurent Dubois complete with crunchy amino acid clusters. Yum!!!

Our tasting at Paroles de Fromagers was my third (of four) meals of just bread and cheese in the week. Hey, there's a lot of other great food to eat in Paris. We can't eat the same thing for every meal. But let's get back to this whole young raw cow's milk cheese thing, shall we? Because this was the holy grail we came to find in France.

In our second day in country, we went up to Sacré-Coeur, the gorgeous white and gold church in Montmartre which overlooks the entire city of Paris. After climbing to the highest point in the dome for a less than impressive view in the morning mist (you can't get all the way to the top, just so you know), we took a walk over to 54 rue Damrémont, the location of Chez Virginie, a fromagerie that we had read specialized in the sort of contraband cheeses not permitted in the good old U. S. of A. that we were seeking on our trip.

Chez Virginie is an amazing place. It's a tiny little shop with very little floor space that appropriately devotes much more surface area to their product than it does to customers or the people who work there. The spread is incredible. There are cut and whole cheeses in every color and texture and each is immaculately presented.

I can speak enough broken French to get by but I can't ask for some young raw cow's milk cheese. So after a quick "parlez-vous anglais?" we got to the business at hand. These guys were great. After getting my preferences down (definitely some soft blue with strong flavor and maybe something a bit stiffer in texture) I was pointed to a couple of different cheeses that they felt met my requirements. What I emerged with was a slice of Bleu de Bonneval, a wheel of Saint-Félicien and the directions to the nearest boulangerie.

While I struck out with the Saint-Félicien which was a bit too goat's cheese textured, the Bleu de Bonneval was a grand slam home run. It is an off white cheese with large irregular gashes of blue and a yellow and green striped rind. It was soft and creamy which was just what I asked for with a sharp finish and I could taste the blue on my tongue while I walked around Montmartre the rest of the morning. This is what I came to France for. This was the perfect blue that I was seeking.

Now, whether it being a young raw cow's milk cheese made it this way, I can't say. Sure you can get a cheap thrill out of breaking the FDA taboo but I'd obviously have to compare it to some other older cheeses to get a really good benchmark. The only thing I can say is that having more types of cheeses available to me gives me more variety to pick and choose which are my favorites. The Bleu de Bonneval is definitely on that list. And I didn't get sick or die or turn into a piece of mold or whatever else our American regulatory agencies feel is going to happen to us.

The blue we ate from Chez Virginie I think was one of the top two cheeses I consumed in my week plus in Paris. The other hands down winner was the 24 month aged Comte from Fromagerie Laurent Dubois in the 5e Arrondissement which was just plain buttery and cheesy and so delicious. If you love cheese, I'd encourage you to find your own cheese trail in Paris. Next time I go I'm sure I'll consume as much or more as I did this time and I'll do it totally differently. After all, if de Gaulle was right, I just scratched the surface on this trip.

Final note: I know what you are thinking. How much weight did I gain in France? Let me just say that Paris is an incredible walking city. I came back from Paris weighting exactly what I did when I left home. Seven to ten miles of walking each day will do that for you. If some of that walking is done with a baguette and a hunk of cheese, I'm all for it. Bon appetit, everyone!

Baguette and Fourme d'Ambert Grand Affinage (blue cheese) for breakfast near the Maubert-Mutualité Metro.