Relaxing and Remembering - Paris, Days 6 & 7

Our sixth day in Paris was relaxing. Mindy, Les and I walked down to La Defense and spent a few hours trying to find new shoes for my hubbie at the mall. He brought two pairs of shoes on vacation - one casual, one dressy. His dressy shoes bit the dust after our anniversary night out. I guess it was time. He'd only had them since before we started dating! I think they lived a good life. His other shoes were hurting his feet. Uncomfortable feet = unhappy traveler so we went to several different shoe stores until we found the right pair.

Just to make sure they were the ones we went and had some lunch before we made the purchase. Mindy took us to a very good restaurant. She and I shared some curry and fancy, very rich grilled cheese sandwiches filled with some sort of blue cheese. YUM! After lunch we decided to grab a coffee at Starbucks, which happened to be just two doors down. We found a table and just sat and chatted for at least an hour. It was so nice! Mindy and I used to do that a lot when we were teenagers - find a coffee shop, get a good caffeine buzz and talk for hours. It was like I was back home in SLO. Poor Les had to sit and endure all the girl talk. :) He was a good sport!

Completely stuffed we returned to the shoe store and Les bought his new shoes. We meandered around few more shops before heading back to Mindy and Arnaud's house.

The next day we made our way to Pere Lachaise Cemetary. We caught a train from La Defense and were on our way.

The modern arch at La Defense

We found the cemetery easily and decided to grab some lunch before we entered. The restaurant we finally agreed upon happened to be close to the entrance recommended by our Rick Steves book . Well fed, we began our tour.

A very moving sculpture of a boy and his dog.

Oscar Wilde's Tomb

"The Widowers"
I don't know if these gentlemen were actually widowers, but it seems like an appropriate title for a picture of four men in dark coats walking in the cemetery.

Jim Morrison's Grave

Frederic Chopin's Grave
Seeing Chopin's grave was very moving. It kind of caught me off guard. He is one of my favorite composers and I love playing his pieces on the piano.

Moon Rising over Pere Lachaise Cemetery

We spent several hours meandering around the cemetery. It was much larger than we expected. Thankfully we followed Rick Steves' tour in his Paris 2008 book which helped us find many of the famous graves.

We had intended to visit the Picasso Museum after leaving the cemetery but it was too late. We doubted that we could get there before they closed. We decided to go to the Musee de l'Orangerie instead because they stayed open later.

As we arrived at the museum we were told they were closing early because of the transit strikes! We were bummed, but several other tourists were downright angry. One lady had purchased a museum pass and that was her last day to use it. Unfortunately the early closings made it difficult for her (and others) to get the expected value from the pass.

When everything closes early there isn't much to do except eat and shop. As I mentioned before our suitcases were small so we were limited on our shopping and Mindy is a great cook and she cooked for us most evenings we stayed with them so there was no reason to eat out. Even though it was relatively early in the evening we decided to head back to the apartment and relax for the rest of the evening.

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