"Either this wallpaper goes or I do"

Paris (week 16)

Even in Paris, posted store opening hours are mere suggestions.  The boulangerie across the street opened 20 minutes late one day, and the grocer was over an hour late the next morning.  Granted, both those days were on the weekend, but it's still frustrating when you're waiting to buy bread or milk for breakfast for your children!  If anything, it seems worse here than in Provence.  In contrast, the tourist attractions operate with a military precision.

We wandered around the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in the afternoon after dropping Nana off at the airport.  It has surprisingly good views of the city (for example, the Eiffel tower can be seen from the central chapel - provided the Seine mist has cleared).  We all took a walk through the front end, the only famous tomb we saw wasn't even occupied any more - Rossini's remains were moved to Florence, but the empty tomb was left as a memorial.  We then got kicked out at closing time.

Craig went back the next morning to see some of the cemetery's other famous residents, including Oscar Wilde (who supplied the subject quote), Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Bizet, Molière, various Napoleonic generals, and the deportation memorials (one for each death camp that deportees from Drancy were taken to).  Mostly, though, he spent his time trying to find the grave of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, one of France's most famous and influential chemists.  It took three visits, consulting online pictures and three maps of the cemetery to find it - probably 45 minutes of searching - and he's right on one of the roads, just the other side of the section from where the maps show him.  I guess the moral of the story is if you want your tomb to be left alone, become a chemist.

l to r: Honoré de Balzac; Frédéric Chopin; and Grand Admiral Joachim Murat

Craig, David, and Andrew had a day on the town while Yolanda was at the tennis matches.  They went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe (something Craig has wanted to do since 1986 - when it was closed for restoration) and visited the Salon du Chocolate (a food fair dedicated to chocolate).  The convention centre was also hosting a gaming expo at the same time, but the boys chose the chocolate show.