Extracurricular Activities

In early December, I had my first school field trip this side of my high-school diploma. My school's Modern Foreign Language department was taking some Year 8 and Year 10 kids to the city of Aachen, in Germany, to visit a Christmas market. In keeping with the trips we've done so far, it was a whirlwind visit: 7 teachers and 50 kids boarded a bus on the Thursday night, drove all night to arrive in Aachen at 6:00 a.m., then toured the city until about 4:00, when we piled back onto the bus for the ride home, finally pulling into the school car park around 11:00 the Friday night.

For such a hectic-sounding schedule, the tour was surprisingly peaceful. For most of the morning, the kids had free time to explore the city and visit the market on their own in small groups. We met up with them every 90 minutes or so, but otherwise they (and we) were free.

It was a rather chilly morning, so the first order of business was to find a cafe and warm up. This was easily done, and I learned something too - Germany has the best coffee in Europe. I would have expected to find it in Italy or France, but Germany takes the prize. In a German McDonalds, for 1€, you can get a cappucino that puts the others to shame; the fare in proper coffee shops is even better.

Properly warmed and caffeinated, I meandered about the old town looking for the 6 famous fountains that dot the city. In the end I only managed to find three, but then, it wasn't really my trip, was it?

The first was Geldbrunnen, a round fountain with figures all around it symbolizing the flow of money through the city. A vortex in the middle, known as "The Taxman" was a reminder of where it all goes in the end.

The second was the charming Puppenbrunnen, or Puppet Fountain, covered with moveable brass figures that passers by could play with and pose as they liked.

Finally I came upon this happy fellow:

As the story goes, Bakhauv waits for revellers coming home from the Brauhauses later than they should and jumps on their back for a ride.

By that time, it was time to head back to the meeting point for the first check-in with the kids. I still had fears of police or irate shopowners dragging our kids back to us by the ears complaining of some hooliganism or other, but it seems our kids acquitted themselves admirably. Apart from bad negotiating skills, the kids seemed to have done alright and they were anxious to show us their purchases.

It may have been a missed teachable moment, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that 14€ is way too much to pay for a yo-yo.

On my second go round the town, I walked with a group of other teachers, including a German teacher who had been to Aachen many times and was able to show us around. We walked through the market, smelled the Gluhwein, and made our way round to the medieval Rathaus, which might be an apt or unfortunate word for 'town-hall,' depending on whether or not you work there.

In the afternoon we took the kids on a guided tour of the old town, which started out as a Roman spa. We heard about the history of the fountains and of the archaeological digs exposing Roman foundations under modern buildings. We went into a huge pharmacy that had installed a glass panel in the floor where you could see the site where the ancient buildings were being unearthed.

One last time we turned the kids loose while the teachers went for lunch. Here I discovered that even in Germany, not so far from Frankfurt, a Frankfurter is still just a big hotdog. I don't know why I expected different, but I did. Sure it comes with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes with gravy instead of mustard, relish, onions and coleslaw (mmmm...); at the end of the day it's still just a big hot dog.

As the sun was just starting to set, we piled the kids onto the bus for the ride home which, not surprisingly, was rather more peaceful than the ride out. Everybody was pretty knackered, kids included, and no amount of Red Bull or Kx Stimulant Drink was going to keep their eyes open. We rolled back into the school around 11:00 and by 11:30 the last of the kids had been picked up.

One final note: I have now been to two more countries that Melissa. I've seen a Belgian truck stop and a few miles of Dutch highway more than she. ;P !

Another Concert Review

First, let me say a big belated thank you to everybody who took time to wish me a happy birthday. It’s really good to know that as gone as I may be, I'm not forgotten.
As I've gotten older, I've learned to manage my expectations. Nobody likes to be disappointed; if you don't get your hopes up too much, then the let-down isn't so bad when things don't pan out. It may sound a little bit jaded or cynical, but that philosophy has allowed me to enjoy many fine Wesley Snipes or Jean Claude Van Damme direct-to-DVD releases that could easily have been big disappointments. It's an attitude that allows for taking chances when you just don't know whether you're in for Bloodsport or The Shepherd: Border Patrol.
If I told you we were going to a concert at the largest and most prestigious concert hall in all of Croydon (that's like the largest and most prestigious concert hall in all of Chateauguay), what would you expect? How about if I told you we were going to see an acapella group who reproduce instrument sounds with their voices?
As we waited for the lights to go down and the show to start, the girl sitting behind us commented that when she performed here, the place had been much more full. The maroon and off-white 1960s decor of Fairfield Halls faded into shadow as an unassuming middle-aged man in a polar fleece came out to announce the opening act that hadn't been on the bill. With a modest introduction like that, it's no wonder Krystle Warren blew my mind.
Alone with her guitar on a stage that was rather too big for her, Krystle Warren seemed to open her set cautiously. My first thought was that it was a shame we were seeing her in such a big room – this girl belonged in a smoky cafe or a small cabaret. Plunking a couple of chords on her guitar, she sang a simple song in a rich, throaty alto that gave no hint of the vocal acrobatics coming up. Krystle expanded to fill the stage and then the entire room as she unpacked a Joni-Mitchell-meets-Billie-Holiday sound that captivated the crowd. By the time she took her leave to make way for the headline act, I was completely won-over.
The first half of Naturally 7’s set was part concert, part technical demonstration. Their set-list of R&B, hip-hop and gospel music was broken up by rather a lot of background – who the band was, how they came to be, where they had been, etc. Their demonstrations of the human drum set and the loop pedal were entertaining enough. Each of these massively talented musicians mimicked instruments from horns to keyboards to wailing distorted guitars, on top of singing lead and harmonies that put Boyz II Men to shame. Each little story led into the next song, so the set flowed nicely enough, although I was nagged by the sense that these guys had huge energy that they weren’t turning loose. A highlight came at the end of a story about two brothers in the band growing up with nothing but John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel records in the house. The 7 put their mics down and came to the front of the stage and gave a soulful acoustic rendition of The Sound of Silence. Full respect for the talent and skill, but I was still waiting for them to blow the roof off. About 45 minutes into the set, I got my wish.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was that signalled to the crowd that it was time to change gear, but everybody got it pretty well all at once. Suddenly everyone realized that nobody wanted to be sat in their seats watching these guys have fun; we wanted to be part of it. Everybody got out of their seats and started dancing and singing with abandon. When the 7 saw us out of our seats, they reciprocated by involving us in the show, giving the audience rhythms to clap, steps to dance, and parts to sing. For the next half-hour was a jumping, shaking, crowd-rocking party worthy of Ozomatli or Herbaliser. The human bass guitar, a lanky kid in a white dinner jacket with an impossibly deep voice, made the women scream when he spoke into the mic. Naturally 7 went through a mishmash of Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and other crowd-pleasers as well as some of their own original material. After a short break followed by a 30-minute encore, they ended with a wildly extended adaptation of Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight that had everyone singing as they left the hall.
I knew we were taking a chance in seeing this show. Seven guys trying to sound like Larvell Jones have the potential to reach rare depths of lameness. But of course, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and our risk was handsomely rewarded with a thoroughly satisfying show.

Gute Fahrt!

Six years later, we meet again.

When I last saw my South Korean (Texas-native) roommate, Stacey, I didn’t expect I would next see her in Germany – a baby, I expected, but not the location. But as the sign in her entranceway reads: “Home is where the Air Force sends you”. She and her husband Ben have been stationed here for nearly four years and baby Gemma was born here. Unfortunately, Ben was ‘down range’ (military base-speak for 'deployed to Iraq'), so we didn’t get to visit with him. The main purpose of this trip was to hang out with Stacey and to meet Gemma – of course, since we were in a new country, we saw and we consumed new things. The weekend was a greatly relaxing rotation of drinking, eating, touring and drinking... This is Tom’s favourite trip style: sampling local cuisine and brews, and I learned to appreciate it, too.

So, the relaxing part came in only once we arrived in Stacey’s latest hometown, Landscheid-Neiderkail. Before that was the mad dash to the airport and the absolute chaos of RyanAir. We were on a tight, but manageable schedule (or so we thought). We missed our bus from downtown London to the airport, although that turned out to be a good thing: in rush hour, it is likely your hour-plus bus ride will take double the amount of time (and more because it’s raining heavily) and we hadn’t factored for that kind of contingency... ok, new plan: to the train! We jumped on the tube and headed for the express/expensive train to Stansted Airport. Stansted is where most budget airlines operate, but it is in the middle of nowhere (read: in a galaxy far, far away) and we’ll be rethinking flying from there again...

This was our second RyanAir experience – the first being our trip to Italy (that Italy blog post is a bit elusive, but I’m sure it will make its way up here one day). We were slightly more mentally prepared this time for the frenzy and the madness. RyanAir's no-assigned-seating cost-saving measure turns people into animals. So, you need to try to get in line early to get seats together and that usually fails as you are often just lining up to get on a bus that takes you to the plane. Needless to say, you lose all priority on this bus. Once you find a seat, it takes forever to take-off as people have not obeyed the cabin luggage requirements and there does not seem to be enough room in the overhead storage. This results in flight attendants cursing under their breath (and out loud, because this is RyanAir and service-with-a-smile is not part of the budget package either). The plane is mostly RyanAir-yellow inside and Tom is convinced this contributes to added passenger agitation. The public address system is used to air commercials before departure and this shameless solicitation continues throughout the flight with the attendants constantly hawking everything from the usual duty-free to raffle tickets and smokeless cigarettes for use on board! (End of rant)

We flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport – about as close to Frankfurt as Stansted is to London, but the closest airport to Stacey. It was 11pm Friday night and we were about to have our first European driving experience. It only seemed appropriate to rent the most compact car possible to embark on a classic (movie-version) European road trip. We had an immature laugh at the ‘Gute Fahrt!’ (translation: Bon Voyage!) printed on our rental receipt. We then found the Smart car and had another laugh at its decal decoration. After familiarizing ourselves with the car and a quick review of our international road signs pamphlet, we were off.

Google directions are only good if you don’t get lost. I printed a bigger map for just such an eventuality, but this does not help when there are no signs... We stopped at a gas station immediately (!) after leaving the airport to be sure we were going the right way only to get back in the car and go the wrong way. Once we got turned around, we made it to Stacey’s without any more directional mishaps. This was not without much second-guessing along the way as Google does not describe in-between stages such as tunnels or crazy switchbacks if you are technically on the same unlit, rural highway. All the same, Tom was happy to be driving on the autobahn, even if we could only go 97kph with the gas pedal pinned (ok, we were driving uphill at the time). Admittedly, it was a fun experience and had the side effect of roundabouts finally making sense. We woke Stacey up somewhere close to 2am.

The next morning, we breakfasted with a more-awake Stacey and met Gemma whose hair was tied into a little fountain atop her head. Gemma and Tom made fast friends. Six years of only sporadic correspondence didn’t seem to affect our rapport and there was really an ease to seeing each other again. The day was wet and cold and, according to Stacey, this was typical German weather. She is looking forward to the heat of their next posting in Las Vegas (I didn’t think anyone actually lived in Vegas, but apparently the desert is a great location for F-16 training exercises). Thankfully, it wasn’t snowing; I had ignored several prompts for the snow-tire ‘extra’ during the online car reservation process, but I was really starting to wonder...

Stacey lives in western Germany, right near the Luxembourg border. We discovered that she also lives close to Bitburg, home of the Bitburger Brauerei, so Tom was disappointed that he hadn’t brought his Bitburger T-shirt (free with a case of twelve at the depanneur). Germany’s oldest city is also close by.

Trier was founded in 16BC, and has Assyrian and, more famously, Roman origins. Those omni-present Romans made Trier the western capital of the Roman Empire in the 3rd-century. We visited the incredibly well-preserved and monumental Basilika - Emperor Constantine’s throne hall. It is known by the slightly convoluted distinction of being the largest surviving single-room structure from Roman times. The 2nd-century Porta Nigra is an ancient Roman fortified gate and Trier’s signature landmark.

We wandered through the narrow streets of Trier at a leisurely pace and through intermittent rain. We stopped in front of Karl Marx’s birthplace and quietly took in Trier’s 1600-year old Cathedral. This Cathedral houses Jesus’ “Holy Tunic”, hidden from light and our view; this is the robe Jesus was wearing when he died (although records date only to the 12th-century...). After seeing countless holy relics in Italy, Tom wonders if there is some grand register somewhere keeping track of all their claims. We found a cafe near the Hauptmarkt, the town centre and medieval market, and indulged in some crepes and apple strudel. Before heading back, Tom got a bratwurst (fried sausage) to go.

We stayed in that evening and raided Stacey’s wine cellar / converted bomb shelter. She served us some local Riesling. Looking around her house, I found it overwhelming to imagine the logistics involved in moving lives and households around the world.

On Sunday, we all piled into the Price is Right car again and took a drive through the sunny countryside (on their way home from Korea, Stacey and Ben stopped in Los Angeles to see the long-running game show and Ben became a contestant. They also won snowshoes which would have much better use on a visit to us in Montreal than sitting in a garage in Las Vegas! This is an open invitation.). WWII Germany and divided Germany histories were not at the forefront of my mind on this trip, although Tom confessed that he couldn’t help thinking about them. On our way through Dudeldorf, though, the war became more real and present as we saw deep scars inside the city gates purportedly caused by General Patton’s tanks as they passed through after the 1945 Battle of the Bulge. Less sombre were the rolling hills of the Mosel valley cultivated with vineyards.

We lunched at the Kloster Machern abbey brewery along the Mosel River. I sampled the schnitzel (breaded pork) while Tom tried the sauerbraten (vinegar-marinated beef). Of course, we all had a pint of their home-beer (except Gemma). Stacey then took us to the 700-year old town of Bernkastel. The town still retains much of its medieval origins and well-conserved, half-timbered, colourful houses surround the town square. Unusually for a Sunday, the town was lively due to a visiting French market. Tom and I stopped for an eiswine probe (which has nothing to do with alien autopsies, but means ‘ice wine tasting’). We strolled around the cobbled streets, romantically overlooked by steep hills of vines and castle ruins. Strangely (?!), no one was wearing lederhosen. We couldn’t resist one more strudel before leaving.

Another condition of flying RyanAir is really inconvenient flight times. We said our thank-yous and good-byes to Stacey and Gemma, and made our Smart-way back to the airport for an 11pm flight. Tom slept on the bus into London hoping to compensate for our ultimate 3am arrival... Next week, Tom visits the Christmas markets in Aachen, Germany with a group of 13-year olds in his charge. They leave at 9pm Thursday, drive all night, shop (and supposedly practise German – this is the educational part) all day Friday and get back on the bus to return home – no hotel. Somehow, our travel plans seem less hectic now.

And, a quick note on my visit to Queen Elizabeth II: last week, I capitalized on my ‘lady of leisure’ status (term given to me by a recruiter who hasn’t managed to find me a job) and went to see the Queen on a Wednesday morning. There is great pageantry associated with the State Opening of Parliament. The Queen travels from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament to deliver a speech announcing the program for the new Parliamentary session (prepared by politicians and a big (?) 7 minutes long this year). She is preceded by a procession of military bands, fuzzy-hatted and rifle-toting soldiers and horse guards, and delivered herself in a horse-drawn coach. Guards lining the street form the Royale Salute as she passes by. Loyalists and tourists alike crowd along the route to see her. A middle-aged British man beside me bade her a respectful “God bless you, M’am”. I am increasingly watchful that my European experiences not be viewed solely through my camera, so I took a good look at her and then tried to find her with the lens. The result is that a horse nearly blocked her completely in the photo... (click on it for full-size image)

Canterbury Tales

On this day of celebration of the (thwarted) attempt to blow up Parliament, I present to you Canterbury and other tales of English plotting. With my sister visiting, weekdays became tourist days again and we took a day trip to this medieval city (while poor Tom worked...).

Canterbury is inextricably linked to (hi)stories of various insecure King Henrys murdering various righteous Saint Thomases. The city was established much earlier than these kings and saints by the Romans in the 3rd century, and Roman St. Augustine arrived 400-years later to convert the pagans and found Canterbury Cathedral.

Cathedrals are unceasingly amazing in the way they contain space and the sheer amount of space they contain. With this being my reaction in the modern world, imagine a 12th-century pilgrim arriving in this space... As always, my favourite place is the cloister. I can’t help but think the world would be a much less stressful place if only everyone had access to one.

Today, of course, Canterbury Cathedral is the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion and home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, when I naively asked the audio-guide clerk if the Archbishop might be in, she told me that he resides in more-happening London and only comes on special occasions. An Archbishop more in evidence was Thomas Becket.

Thomas Becket was murdered in the northwest transept of the Cathedral in 1170. A floor stone bearing his name and contemporary, macabre swords pointed out the location of his gruesome demise. Four knights of King Henry II apparently mistook the king’s venting over Becket’s defiance as a direct order to kill the archbishop. His canonization occurred three years later after countless miracles attributed to his blood (including bringing people back from the dead!). Similarly countless pilgrims made their way to Canterbury to visit his shrine and their treks became the context of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

The location of Saint Thomas’ shrine is now marked only by a lit candle and the path of stones worn down by pilgrims. It was destroyed / looted by Henry VIII in 1538 to end the pilgrimages and assert the unquestionable authority of the monarchy. Remember this Henry for later, too.

Enclosing the Cathedral and the Old Town are the remains of the city walls and their Roman, Norman and medieval elements. The Old Town is a mostly walking tour kind of place and we visited on a steady-rain kind of day. Nevertheless, we persevered, wet and somehow still enjoying ourselves, along the City Wall Trail. We wound our way down narrow streets and past time-warped, crooked houses, and read historical anecdotes from our increasingly moist guidebook. Despite the rain, the town was picturesque in fall colours. A wonderful find was the Greyfriars humble refectory spanning the ironically tiny Great Stour River. The rain did, however, lead to a photo shortage as my camera stayed buried under my jacket most of the day.

We took a side-trip outside the city walls to visit 1000-year old St. Dunstan’s Church. This church purportedly houses Saint Thomas More’s head in a vault beneath the floor. A few years before destroying the first Saint Thomas’ shrine, King Henry VIII beheaded his trusted advisor, Thomas More, for refusing to recognize him as head of the Church of England. More’s severed head adorned a pike along London Bridge for a month and then was thought to have been retrieved by his foster daughter and buried in her vault here.

Rainy twilight in the cemetery of the oldest church in England is not the ideal weather, time nor location for an overactive imagination, but that is where I found myself, amidst the gravestones, wondering where my sister was. I thought she was right behind me and she, apparently, didn’t know where I went... I suddenly had twigs in broken tombs morphing into skeletal hands... We managed to find each other and even bravely set about looking for some grave marker indications of St. Martin’s 6th-century origins.

The rain stopped in time for us to catch the train back to London.

Suz has since returned home and I am slowly sifting through the 1500+ photos from our Italy trip. The Fates compensated our one day of rain in Canterbury with seven sunny, beautiful days in Italy. That post will have to wait until we get back from Landscheid-Neiderkail (near Frankfurt) – this weekend we’re visiting my old roommate from Korea who’s living there now.

Postscript: The TV Licensing Enforcement Division finally came by yesterday for their surprise inspection. He stepped one foot in the door, barely glanced around and removed us from their hit list!

And, cheers again to Guy Fawkes for the brilliant and deafening light show out my window - it’s been a week of amateur, back-garden firework displays culminating in tonight’s extravaganza.

Unfinished Business... Ghosts

We're taking off for Italy this afternoon, and I don't want this unfinished post to be lost to the ages, so here it is in its current incarnation. I may come back to it later, I may not. Hey, if the great composers can leave unfinished masterworks, surely no one will miss a proper ending to my humble blog post. Enjoy...

I don't believe in ghosts. I think those shows where so-called ghost-hunters and experts in the paranormal sit around and scare each other with flashlights are retarded. For that reason I have been throroughly surprised by the impact that ghosts have had on me since our arrival in Europe.



I've visited 14th century Buddhist temples in Korea, Inca and pre-Inca ruins in Peru, and 1000-year-old Norse settlements in Canada, and each of these sites has offered a powerful testimony to the history they have witnessed. None of them, however, has been so vividly inhabited by figures so familiar as the ones I've encountered here. Since arriving in London I've felt the palimpsest presence of a host of characters whose histories are literally the stuff of legend.



At Westminster Abbey, surrounded on all sides by the tombs and monuments of a millenium's worth of heroes, I felt what must be pretty typical tourist-saturation. It's hard to be as impressed as you feel you should be looking at the tomb of Rudyard Kipling, when William Shakespeare is enshrined across the hall and Geoffrey Chaucer lies just beside. Nevertheless, I was truly awestruck when I laid eyes on St. Edward's Chair, which has been used in the coronation of every English monarch since Edward III in 1308* up to and including the current Queen. Aside from the fact that this 700-year-old artefact is still in use, and the voice of Jeremy Irons in my audioguide, what really imbued the Chair with a life of its own was the graffiti, itself 300 hears old, scratched all over the chair.



Just next door is the considerably smaller and younger Church of St. Margaret. We almost didn't go into this modest chapel in the shadow of the Abbey, but as we sat in our pew watching the sun stream through the stained glass, I could swear I saw the ghost of John Milton seeking God's guidance in the writing of Paradise Lost, or perhaps praying that his sight should last until he acheived his ambition of reading every book ever written. It is in moments like these that I start to believe in ghosts.


Standing on the spot where they executed William Wallace outside the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, looking at the front door of General Wolfe's home in Bath, or ...


Sharing a glass of wine with the spirits of Hemmingway, Sartre and Picasso...


Gazing out the same windows at the views that inspired Rodin and Rilke...


Standing over the earthly remains of Chopin, Modigliani, and Moliere...

These places bear vivid imprints of individuals who accessed something greater than themselves, and by that virtue they hold a privileged position in our world.



*Queen Mary I is the only exception.

A Moveable Feast

We set off from our flat at the ungodly hour of 05.00 - when the only other creatures stirring are Croydon foxes (well, a lone, scruffy one at least). Eurostar shuttles us the two hours to Paris (we’re practically neighbours!) with only some intermittent high-speed-train-ear-pressure issues to complain of. We arrive in Paris, it’s still morning and we’re armed with an ambitious itinerary to make the most of our weekend. This is why we moved to Europe: to have no more reason than a weekend to explore different countries and cultures in this continent dense with different countries and cultures.

To play up stereo-types, Tom trips on a wine cork on our way out of the train station and people walk by munching on whole baguettes and drinking wine straight from the bottle (bottle-drinking evidenced more in the evening, so maybe not representational... however, the dépanneur clerks did have corkscrews handy at the cash...). The incredible number of smokers has Tom craving a cigarette, but he manages to resist. We’re happy to hear and speak French again, and logic is restored with traffic back on the right – except motorbikes, they drive wherever’s most convenient, including the sidewalk. Crosswalks are just as unsafe as at home. We also make the unexpected discovery that Paris is mostly composed of white dust (geologically, some combination of sand, limestone, plaster “of Paris” and gypsum).

Our first stop is the Arc de Triomphe. This great Napoleonic monument is unfortunately set in a giant, traffic-filled roundabout, but is also, and more interestingly, the focal point of numerous boulevards – another Napoleonic creation. We look towards its modern-day counterpart, the Grande Arche de Défense, before walking to Paris’ most recognizable landmark.

Along the way to the Tour Eiffel (and everywhere else), we pass only low-scale, white stone buildings with French balconies and mansard roofs of the most elaborate composition. We pause at the Jardins du Trocadéro, across the Seine, to take in our first views of the tower. Here we also see the first of many souvenir-mongers selling miniature Eiffel Towers. Strangely, no matter where they are in the city, this is all they sell. It makes you wonder how many of these trifles are in existence; we do not support their proliferation. The Eiffel Tower is a wonder of iron construction dating back to the World’s Fair of 1889 and its antique, inclined elevators look about this old. We decide to leave the daytime ascent to the crazy lines of tour bus-tourists and come back in the evening. Unfortunately, after a long day of walking, the prospect of climbing all those stairs (not wanting to chance the rickety elevators) is less than appealing – next time...

We then wander along the Champs de Mars, metro to our hotel and grab a croissant and a baguette for lunch. The subway here actually uses its full name Métropolitain (unlike its Montreal descendant) and has wonderful turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau entrances.






On to the Panthéon. This church, stripped of its saintly title, Ste-Geneviève, in the post-Revolution, secularisation frenzy, proves to be the most photogenic of our tour. A multi-winding-stairways trip up to the dome offers great views across Paris and within the dome’s stunning interior. The high dome also accommodates a reproduction of Foucault’s 1851 pendulum experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. Down in the dimly lit, eerie crypts, we find the tombs of Marie Curie, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, among others.



We once again cross the Seine to Île de la Cité – site of Paris’ first settlement (300 BC) and the Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris. A monstrous line of tourists snakes its way through the courtyard of this gothic masterpiece. The eyes delight in flying buttresses, spires, gargoyles and the countless sculptures of the three arched doorways. The most graphic carvings depict extreme scenes of heaven and hell – decapitated heads boiled in pots and sinners eaten whole by dragons. We will take advantage of the Nuit Blanche activities (yearly, all-nighter event conveniently timed with our visit) to see the church in the evening - hopefully when all the tour buses have gone to bed. Also on the island, we take in the Pont Neuf and the Revolution’s prison and former palace, the Conciergerie.

To stretch our legs a little more, we head over to the Rive Droite. At Rogers’ and Piano’s Centre Pompidou, the courtyard is full of people – crazy and sane alike – congregating in the shadow of the building’s fully displayed innards. We’re amazed that it still looks clean, thirty years on, given the mess of pipes, cables and shafts. We also visit the slightly-out-of-the-way/good-exercise Place des Vosges – the oldest planned square in Paris.

With the effects of the croissant worn off, we seek dinner before 19.00. Uninitiated to the culture of late night dining, we finally find a restaurant that will open its kitchen for us – not a good restaurant, but one with local charm and, more importantly, food.


We return to Notre Dame and experience the beautiful, vaulted ceilings by chandelier and candle-light – each one a parishioner’s prayer. For the Nuit Blanche, there is an ‘installation lumineuse’ that borders on the sacrilegious. The gaudy plexiglas and neon light ‘crystals’ certainly do not ‘illuminate the faith’ as promised, but do result in some funky photo lighting. Thankfully, no tour buses are in sight.











I could not visit Paris without somehow evoking Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Callaghan. The best way to do this was a visit to the Quartier Latin. We have a glass of wine on the sidewalk terrace of the old café haunt of Hemingway, Sartre and Picasso, Les Deux Magots. The extortionate prices were surely never paid by Hemingway in his early and poor years in Paris. Having read Hemingway’s Paris memoirs A Moveable Feast, it seemed an appropriate title for this post: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

The evening ends with a few other Nuit Blanche stops. We pass by the Jardin du Luxembourg with its giant disco ball suspended from a crane, dubbed the Eiffel Tower’s mistress, promising to return the ‘stars’ to the city. On our way back to the hotel, we happen by the Observatory with its green laser beam penetrating the night sky and a projection of the cosmos choreographed to a selection of Queen.

It is the first Sunday of the month and this means free museums in Paris. The Musée du Louvre is deceivingly quiet when we arrive at opening. By the time we reach the first treasure, the Venus de Milo, the crowds are getting difficult. We take the initiation tour of the Louvre and merely scratch the surface of its offerings: Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Michaelangelo’s Slave, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People... The museum buildings themselves are a marvel; Tom wants to return again on a mechanic’s creeper to fully appreciate the ceiling decoration. We exit through Pei’s Grande Pyramide to a much more awake Paris.

To arrive at Musée Rodin, we pass by the traditional and Beetlejuice-esque sculptures of Jardins des Tuileries and the Theban obelisk of Place de la Concorde. Musée Rodin is set in the tranquil gardens of Hôtel Biron. At various times, Rodin, Matisse, Rilke and Cocteau lived here. It is a great escape; we eat in their outdoor cafe and spend a few hours contemplating The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, The Kiss and The Burghers of Calais. Rodin’s characteristic oversized hands seem to lend more emotion to these figures. It is a sublime experience and there is the feeling that this is truly a rare place in the world.









As we leave Musée Rodin for our pilgrimage to Cimetière du Père Lachaise, we are blinded by the gold dome of the Hôtel des Invalides. A metro ride later and we are in that vast cemetery home to 800,000 dead and a few local cats. We are here because Tom decided he had to see the final resting place of Chopin and the hands that composed Ballad No 1, Opus 23 in G Minor, even if they are now reduced to dust. On this cool autumn day, dead leaves crackle underfoot and add to this perfectly spooky setting for a (good) horror film. We spend a few hours wandering around the labyrinthine paths and get even more disoriented off the paths trying to find the graves of Moliere, Balzac, Proust, Stein, Wilde, Morrison, and others. I scare myself by peeking into broken tombs and knowing that I am undoubtedly walking on the dead (in my usual approach to cemeteries, I do not tread over the bodies themselves...). The graves are often marked with gothic doorways - hopefully one-way... This is not your typical grassy cemetery; it is all stone and white dust. Built-in planters with often ironically dead plants adorn many of the tombs. Modern visitors pay tacky tributes with plastic flowers. Chopin, luckily, has well-tended live plants.

Two of the most popular graves are those of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Having moved to Paris only a few months before his death, Jim Morrison’s body lies beneath a stone reading ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ. This Greek inscription literally means ‘according to his own demon’. Less ominous, Oscar Wilde’s grave is covered in lipstick kisses. These are apparently a tribute to his daring homosexual lifestyle and because he was jailed for love. However, the kisses added while we were there seemed more the result of peer pressure and the novelty of it all.





Our last stop is Montmartre where we’ve given ourselves a few hours to decompress over views of Paris and a relaxing meal. We walk up the steps of the Basilique du Sacré Coeur – reminiscent of our own Oratory. Great views of the city await at the top. We dine at one of those ubiquitous Parisian institutions: the streetside café, post 19.00 (we’ve learned our lesson). A guitarist, accordionist and violinist take turns serenading us. We also have the cultural pleasure of rude wait staff over our steak frites and wine.

We board the Eurostar for our return journey, a paler shade than when we left (recall Paris dust), possibly a few pounds lighter, short on sleep and ready to plan our trip to Italy(!). We better figure out this ‘pacing’ thing if we’re to spend a week there...