France to Tanzania

November 6 and 7th, 2018

Harrowing Travel.

Time to leave France and begin our trip to Africa to visit two children on that continent.

I have never been to Africa and I was both curious and a bit apprehensive about going there. I have been to developing countries before and have been to places where I was a minority, plus I have two children living there without incident, so there was no objective reason for my concerns. I know it is utterly romantic, but, hearkening back to my high school readings, I feel  a bit like Marlow in Heart of Darkness (a Joseph Conrad novel) preparing to go into a mysterious (at least to me) and uncharted space.

So much for feelings. We had to get up early, 6:00 am, to be driven, by our son-in-law to the Amboise train station to catch an early train to get us to the Paris airport early enough for an international flight.  We arrived at the station in plenty of time, but noticed as we entered the station a lot of people milling around. The electronic train information board showed a lot of delayed trains. It was hard to get information, but we finally were told that there was something wrong with the infrastructure at the station and trains were not stopping there. Needing to get to the airport, we tried to rent a car. There were almost a dozen rental car companies at the station, but until we got to the last one, none had cars available. An expensive one way rental, but we had to get there, so we took off on to the very expensive French tollways. Then we had to fill up the tank with expensive French gasoline. It took a lot of work by the son-in-law to get a refund from the railway.

We arrived at the airport later than the train would have gotten us there, but still with plenty of time. I subsequently learned that I had received a speeding ticket during that drive. I did not think I was speeding and many cars passed me along the way. It seems as if I always get a speeding ticket every time I drive in France.

We are flying on Egypt Air to Tanzania via Cairo. The reviews of the airline were OK and so I picked that airline rather than selecting what I thought might be more reputable airlines, Turkish or Qatar, because they had more circuitous routes, via Istanbul or Doha, that took longer.

The flight to Cairo was uneventful, food and in-flight service was fine, and we arrived on schedule. The interior of the Cairo airport was pretty good, better than LaGuardia, but not as nice as Doha, and large. I misread the time of our connecting flight and while we were looking for an airport lounge to decamp into, we discovered that we better get to our gate for the flight to Dar es Salaam. I was also confused about our arrival time in Dar given the time zone change and the change in the departure time.

It was strange being on a flight where most of the passengers did not look like me, dress like me or speak like me, but again the flight and service were uneventful. We arrived in Dar about 4:00 am local time. I think we have been up and traveling for about 24 hours. We passed through Immigration fairly easily after paying $100 in dollars for our visa, but I then was faced with the fact that my luggage had not arrived. It was a laborious process filling out the claim forms in longhand with a person who was not an employee of Egypt Air.

After the lengthy process we met Frank, the driver who our daughter had arranged to pick us up and deliver us to our daughter's apartment. Fare was $25 in dollars. As we drove from the airport into Dar in the early morning sunlight we saw Dar begin to wake up. Many pedestrians, even more people cramming the buses on their way to their daily activities. The city has an impressive skyline and a beckoning harbor. Lots of trash and not too much greenery. Even at that early hour the traffic was beginning to build and as we made our way through the downtown area to go to our daughter's neighborhood in northern Dar, the incoming traffic, particularly approaching the Selander Bridge was approaching a standstill. After the bridge we drove along the bay for a brief time and took in a glimpse of nice beaches.

Our daughter lives in a luxurious, (not by NYC standards) high rise, gated, apartment complex. She is there through a friendship with a European diplomat. With a balcony, pool and expansive views of the bay it was not something that she could have afforded by herself on her NGO salary. I had not seen our daughter for 15 months since she had left for Africa so we had a joyous greeting. She went off to work and we had some breakfast, unpacked (no need for me to do that) and then took a nap in a room that had been temporarily vacated by a diplomat who was on extended travel.

Our daughter picked us up at the apartment in mid afternoon. She made some calls about the luggage and learned that the luggage had not been located, but that Egypt Air flew into Dar only twice a week so even as they located my luggage, the earliest it would arrive would be on Sunday. We walked over to the site of her Swahili language teacher. With her working at a local organization and the language lessons she has become pretty fluent in Swahili. We took a one hour lesson and picked up some basic phrases. I left with a cheat sheet.  Next we went to a street vendor our daughter knew so I could get some clothes. After much bargaining and searching through piles of clothes I left with two European club soccer jerseys, orange track pants, a bathing suit and a pair of shorts, all used, for $15 (our daughter would not let me bargain hard) and all seemingly from western countries.  (I recall that when we were in Haiti I saw the same phenomena, lots of athletic branded western clothing, even some with championships that were not attained.) We then walked over to a harbor front restaurant at the Best Western Hotel where we drank "sundowners", a common activity among the affluent.

 Beautiful sunset over the bay.
We took a "taxi", a three wheeled "brajyi" out of there. We finished the evening with dinner at a local restaurant, Jackies. There was a power failure so we ate outside from a limited menu, but the meal, conversation and local beer were all good.  

Domestic Activities

October 29 - November 6, 2018

We are staying at the country house of our daughter, granddaughters and husband. They kids are on school holiday, so the main purpose of this part of the trip is visiting, along with shopping, cooking and eating.

1. Monday - The main activity for the day was food shopping. We went to a large, upscale Walmart type store and then went to several specialty stores, butcher, bakery, cheese store etc. Spent over 400 euros. Aside from interacting with the relatives, there is not much to do out here. We are in the country, about 15 km away from Amboise. There is no mass transit and we are without a car since I crashed and totaled  the Twingo back in 2016. The Internet connection is at best spotty and television and radio are, understandably, largely in French. So with the assistance of the youngest grandchild, we made cookies. They were hard to cook because the stove at the house is not functioning well, but they were eaten quickly.
  Every time I come to the daughter's house I run. I purchased running shoes in Ljubljana in 2015 (much more expensive than in the US) and have left them in the guest house here ever since. They were always a bit tight, hard to convert to European sizes, but that never caused a problem. I learned that our daughter had been using them and now they were very tight at the right toe, but I ran in them anyway. I always run here, regardless of the season, because I enjoy being out on the county roads, running past the wine vineyards, through the forest, the air is very clear, and probably because I have little else to do. Unlike other places, and even though I have usually not run before these visits, I do not have any hesitancy about running here. I usually start out running about 2 miles and work my way up, depending upon the length of the visit to 5 or 6 miles. So today began the usual running regime.
  On another note, another grandson was born today.
2. Tuesday -  Our daughter's Irish friend/employer is, along with her French husband, a bit of an entrepreneur owning a vineyard, winery, restaurant and wine shop. She and an American artist had cooked up a plan to display the artist's pictures in the restaurant and on wine bottles, coupled with the purchase of some pictures. The friend presented us with a proposed contract to memorialize these arrangements. That contract had allegedly been drafted by an American friend of the artist. It was very disjointed and failed to account for detailed French law on the subject of the rights of artists.This was a great task, it gave me something to do. We had lunch with the artist and friend at a wonderful bistro in the country. It was a lovely lunch.
  We then went to the chateau where the artist is staying. It is a magnificent complex that is owned by an American couple who live in the Bay area and are patrons of this artist.
  Our final stop was at the complex where our oldest son will house guests for his wedding celebration in June. It seems very nice, an old hotel with nice grounds and views. Not within walking distance of the town where many of the guests will be staying.
 Ran little further in the evening. Great sunsets in the countryside at this time of year.
3. Wednesday - Slow day. Ran in the morning and then began research on the contract. In the evening we went to a Halloween party and dinner at the home of our daughter's brother-in-law. They have a very nice house and grounds.
4. Thursday - Another slow day.Went for tea at the opulent home and winery of our daughter's friend. All woman except for me and lots of french spoken. Good tea, but I was pretty bored. Ran 3 miles in the afternoon but toe was feeling squeezed. In the late afternoon I made banana bread with the middle granddaughter. That was eaten quickly.
5. Friday - The daughter and the grandchildren drove with us to Tours to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. The theatre showed the film in English. A fun movie even though while I was not that familiar with the group Queen, I did recall their music. In the evening we went to a group our daughter has organized for English speaking expats who live in the Loire Valley. They meet monthly in a bar/restaurant, Le Shaker, on an island in the Loire River. We have attended this group in the past and have met some of the attendees. A pleasant evening.
6. Saturday - Ran 4 miles in the morning. Feeling stronger, but toe is definitely uncomfortable. Probably doing damage, but I enjoy the running. We went to Tours again, this time for appliance shopping. The stove in our daughter's kitchen barely worked, it required all sorts of manipulations and gimmicks to turn and keep the stove burners on and the oven door shut. They did not have the resources to replace it. So we purchased a new stove/oven, freezer and other appliances for them at a warehouse appliance type store. Kids remain kids.
7. Sunday - Ran 5 miles into the woods in the morning. We went out to dinner out in Tours at an American style diner, burgers and shakes type fare.
8. Monday - In the morning we went to the friend's house again to offer our suggestions to modify the proposed contract with the artist. We proposed substantial revisions based on French law and she was amenable to them. Subsequently learned that the proposed arrangement fell apart.
 We packed for our departure on the following day. I put several cold weather items, a good vest, hat and gloves,  separately into a bag, probably because I wanted to keep them outside the airline weight limit. Somehow they got lost during the trip and  I have never seen them again.

 Luncheon bistro

 Gatehouse at chateau

 Son's wedding clebration site

 Halloween party

 Sunset at daughter's house

 Friend's house

Sunset in French countryside

Out of Paris

October 28, 2018 Day 6

I was surprised by the time change, a weekend earlier than in the US. Fall back, so we gained an hour and rather than being late we were early for the brunch at the house where the daughter and grandchildren were staying. Friends of the daughter had done a home exchange for this house in Paris and that is where the daughter and granddaughters were staying. It is in an neighborhood of Paris which has very few single family homes and the estimated value is about 4 million euros. Nicely done, but a very small kitchen and three medium sized bedrooms. But it has a circular dining room, two balconies and a finished basement which I was told is the grandparents suite. The owners are a French American couple with two kids. As seems to be common in my anecdotal experiences, in most of these relationships the woman is the immigrant.

It was a lengthy brunch attended mainly by acquaintances of the friend of the daughter. One couple was a French diplomat serving a domestic posting on the West African desk. Her trailing American husband said it was difficult finding a position as his experience was that even when he was well qualified for a job, the firms definitely preferred to hire French. They have a nice little kid.

I took a nap in the mid afternoon and then we walked back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. Took a cab to the train station, Gard Austerlitz. The cabbie did a very good job weaving through crowded Paris traffic to get us to the train station on time. We had to walk the entire length of a 16 car train to get to our assigned coach where we again met the daughter and granddaughters.  It was the "slow" (not the TGV) train for our trip to Amboise. We changed trains in Orleans and arrived in Amboise in the rain and dark.  Drove our to the country house for a welcome dinner and then sleep in the bungalow.

Museum of Immigration

Saturday October 27, 2018 Day 5

We ate breakfast at the hotel. It was a very nice and extensive buffet. Good hot chocolate, but no bagels. Expensive, but good enough to keep us going into the afternoon. We arrived when there was only one other diner, but when we left it was full.

We took off for western Paris on the Metro.  One transfer and a 25 minute ride. I had read an article in the International NY Times by a writer who walked around the exterior of Paris. One of his recommendations was the Museum of Immigration. Off the beaten path and not crowded. Walking from the Metro exit to the museum we saw a much different Paris that in the downtown area. Less affluent, fewer tourists and not as many restaurants. Plus there was a street level light rail line that is not mentioned in the guidebooks.

The building that houses the museum was build in 1931 as part of an exposition celebrating the French empire. Overshadowed perhaps by the British empire, the French empire was also extensive with large holdings in West and North Africa and Southeast Asia, as well as lesser outposts in the Middle East and the West Indies. The exposition, seemingly similar to a world's fair, had exhibits from most of the parts of the empire, (I did not see anything from Syria or Lebanon) as well as several countries, including the US.  However, along with a large sculpture across the street, the art deco exhibition hall was the only permanent structure. The exposition seemed to celebrate France's role as a protector and civilizer of the colonies while at the same time taking for granted the colonies' contribution to French wealth and culture. It was almost as if the latter was treated as an entitlement, provided in exchange for former. I got a hint of that in some of the historical museums I visited in the Netherlands last year and I imagine similar  feelings about colonialism existed in Great Britain, Portugal, Spain etc.

The entry fee for the museum is 6 euro. (nowhere in France have I found discounts for seniors.) There is an aquarium in the building's basement but we chose not to go there or pay the separate entrance fee.

The building has gone through several changes in use since the exposition and has been dedicated to its present use since 2007. Virtually all of the art from the now former colonies has been transferred to the Musee Du Quai Branly (we visited that a few years ago). This museum is more of a historical record of the building, the exposition, immigration to France and the impact of immigration on France. Although I had a very general awareness that France, particularly since its Revolution had been a haven for political refugees and dissidents, I had no knowledge that for centuries it had taken in large numbers of immigrants, in recent decades sometimes exceeding over 3 million a year. That at times has exceeded the number of immigrants absorbed by the US and represents by far a greater percentage of the population. The mix of immigrants has changed from eastern European, to southeast Asia, (Ho Chi Minh was educated and lived in Paris in the 1920s.) to north African and now increasingly sub Saharan Africa. That is evident from the faces that one sees in Paris, particularly in the many service and hospitality jobs. We witnessed a performance art performance on the main floor from an upper floor.

After several hours we departed. We took the Metro, again one transfer, to meet the granddaughters  (minus one who opted for a friend) and daughter, as well as a step grandson on the Champs Elysees. The former were coming from a hop-on hop-off bus tour and the latter from work. All were late as we waited outside the designated restaurant, really a pricey pastry shop. When we finally connected we went up the street to Le Drugstore for coffee and hot chocolate. It seems so frivolous paying very high prices for these drinks just so you can sit in a fancy place on a fancy street, but I imagine it is what many tourists do.

With the granddaughters we went to a movie on the Champs Elysees and saw A Star is Born in English. Apparently many movies are shown in France in English without subtitles. Better than I expected and two very good performances. Then we walked for a bit and had dinner at an Italian restaurant. We then dropped the girls off at the house and walked back to our hotel.

Outside the Museum

     

Musee d Orsay

October 26, 2018 Day 4

The grandkids were off to the Comi Con convention so we went to the Musee d Orsay. This is a top site in Paris that I have never been to. We took the Metro. There was one transfer that required a very long walk underground.

Exiting the Metro we ate at a small sandwich shop near the Seine. Good sandwich and moderate prices.

We did not purchase tickets online as recommended, so we waited for tickets in a long line  that moved very quickly. 12 euro entrance fee. Then we waited to pass through security. Understandably, security is very extensive at all these attractions in France.

The museum is housed in a former railway station, Gare d Orsay, that was built in 1900 for a World's Fair and also housed a luxury hotel and grand reception room. It was taken out of service in 1977 and reopened as a museum in 1986. It is a beautiful building.

The museum houses France's national collection paintings from the impressionist, postimpressionist and art-nouveau movements from the 2d republic, 1848, to the start of WWI, 1914.

There is a lot of art in this museum. We focused on an exhibit that was curated by Julius Schnabel, an American artist/filmmaker, who was matching up his works with works from the museum's collection "to create a conversation across space and time." It worked better than I anticipated. The self portrait of Van Gogh stood alone. We also toured several furniture exhibits, but did not see anything that inspired us for our ongoing renovation in SLC.   There was also lots of sculpture. I got tired and we missed a lot.

After a few hours we exhibited the museum.  In the small square outside the museum there was a street band playing. It was pretty good and soon after it began playing an older woman began to slowly dance in front. I could not tell if she was just a bystander who was inspired by the music or connected to the band. I had a vision that she was the mother of one of the musicians.

We then went to into the Legion of Honor Museum on the opposite side of the square. Lots of metals, weapons and uniforms there, but not much of interest. We left after a brief visit and returned to the hotel by Metro. My spouse stopped off at a patisserie while I went back to the room for an afternoon nap. She felt that she was mistreated there by staff and customers, so she ate my pastry.

We then walked over to the house through a big rainstorm (Practice for Tanzania.) where the kids are staying. The daughter is going out with friends so we are babysitting the grand kids. We made personal pizzas for dinner and watched a superheroes movie. Batman and Superman got together and with the help of some other superheroes defeated a10 ft. tall villain who was seeking to destroy earth, or at least the city, by joining together three cubes. I was not paying close attention, but I did notice that the villain had lots of flying assistants who looked a lot like the characters in the Wizard of Oz. We stayed late after the host returned drinking wine into the a.m. hours. More messed up sleep after we walked back to the hotel through the empty, wet streets of Paris. I imagined that I was in a Woody Allen movie, but a car did not pull up to take us on a time travel adventure.

Van Gogh self portrait

 Metro sign entrance

 Museum d Orsay

Dancing lady
   

Arc De Triomphe and Louis Vuitton Museum

October 25, 2018 Day 3 of Trip

I am having trouble adjusting to the time zone difference and got up too early after too few hours sleep. Age or jet lag? I spent early morning hours reading on the computer and working on the blog, but then really sag in the mid afternoon..

We had to leave by 8:00 to meet step daughter and grandchildren at the US Embassy. They were coming up from the Loire Valley to have a brief Paris vacation and to renew the youngster's US passport. It was about a 35 minute walk from our hotel to the embassy.

I enjoy walking around and within new or foreign cities. Paris is particularly pleasant with all the street level shops and food smells.  The vehicle traffic was not gridlocked. However it is sometimes hard for me to follow Google directions with the foreign pronunciations and the very precise directions that single out even the most minute changes in direction. However we made it with only one rerouting phase. (I never did find FDR Boulevard.)

After greetings we took the two older grandchildren off to breakfast at a non-decrepit cafe. Lots of croissants and drinks for 25 euro. Paris is not cheap. By then the passport work had been completed and we agreed to meet at our hotel.

After dropping off their luggage at our hotel we walked to the Arc de Trimphe. It took about 15 minutes. It is located at the end of the Champs Elysees (that is a nice stroll under trees amidst luxury shops and named after heaven in Greek mythology.) in the Charles de Gaulle Etoile roundabout. You take your life in your hand as a pedestrian if you try to cross the round about on foot. We took the underground passageway.

Contrary to mine and popular belief, neither Napoleon's armies, and except once, nor any armies,  have marched under the arch. The arch was conceived by Napoleon who declared to his troops after the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz where he defeated the combined armies of the Russian and Austrian empires, "I will bring you back to France and there you will be the object of my tenderest attentions...". When he returned to France after the battle he commissioned the construction of the arch in the style of a Roman triumphal arch. The Austerlitz victory was a watershed moment that seemed to forecast a lengthy period of French dominance. However a mere decade later Napoleon had fallen from power, the Empire was crushed, Russian troops occupied Paris (another instance in the Russian view that it alone has saved western/Christian civilization.) and the Arch had barely risen above its foundations. It was not finished until 1836 and at various times has been viewed as dedicated to the monarchy, the Revolution, the Empire and the various French republics.

It has been the site of major French national events such as the return of Napoleon's ashes, the funeral vigil for Victor Hugo and most recently, the final stage for the Tour de France. In 1919 the Allied armies marched under the Arch. That is the only time that such a military procession occurred. I was surprised that German troops did not march through the arch in 1940 after the fall of France. However the pictures showed that the German army march down the Champs Elysees and through the square, but around the arch. No explanation offered.

We paid 12 euro for the opportunity to enter the arch and climb to the top. 202 steps to the mezzanine floor.  That was an effort, but I did not have to stop to rest. There was a small museum on that floor. After touring that we climbed the remaining 82 steps  to the top. The terrace offered sublime panoramas of Paris, particularly the 12 avenues radiating out from the square.

In the attic room off the mezzanine there were exhibits of many of the uniforms worn by the various armies in WWI. Lots of colonials for the British and French.

There are lots of engravings, inscriptions and sculptures on the base and walls of the arch commemorating important events and people in French history.  At the base is the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. As in the US it was dedicated on November 11, 1921.
 We then walked to lunch at an American style burger joint. We ate outside. Very good milkshake.

After lunch we walked to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in western Paris. Opened in 2014, this Frank Gehry designed building is an eye catching architecture design. Like the Disney Hall in LA it features a curving stainless steel exterior topped by 12 glass "sails" overlooking a waterfall and basin that is reminiscent of a boat.  We spent several hours there exploring the many layer building and the exhibits of the works of Egon Schiele, an early 20th century German artist, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The latter was an American painter of Haitian and Puerto Rician heritage who essentially started out as a graffiti artist in NYC and one of his Heads paintings sold for $110,5 million in 2017. He died young in 1988 from a drug overdose.

We then walked back to the hotel. e played some chess games and the kids picked up their luggage after which we ate dinner at a non-decrepit Chinese restaurant near our hotel.

The kids then took off to the house they were staying in and we returned to the hotel. 

 Arc de Triomphe

 View of Champs Elysees from the Arc

 Roof of Gehry's Louis Vuitton museum

Basquiat's Heads that sold for $110.5million

Paris, France October 2018 From the Walking Dead to the Actual Dead

October 23-24, 2018
 Back on the road at the beginning of a 6 week, three country, two continent trip.
 It was a long day of travel and the airline seats seem to be getting smaller, or maybe I have been expanding. Perhaps I may need to invest in business class for future such trips.
 We left for the airport in SLC over three hours before scheduled departure. That was a mistake. Not only is it a shorter trip to the airport than in LA, but it is much easier to get through the airport check-in and security processes in SLC than LA. When added to the flight departure delay, we found our selves with plenty of waiting time, and no airport lounge. However the airport had good Internet connections.
 It was a 2.5 hour flight to Chicago and then an 8 hour flight to Paris. On the former I experienced a rarity, the flight was only 2/3s full. On the latter, the flight was full and we were seated amongst a group of enthusiastic French teenagers returning from a trip to the US.
 I watched two movies, read a substantial portion of Angela's Ashes and slept a little on the latter flight. We arrived in Paris on time about 10:00 am. It took us almost one and a half hours to get to get out of the airport. Walk to immigration (first entry stamp in my new passport, aside from the Sudan visa entry stamp which had necessitated the new passport), wait for luggage pick-up, there was no customs and then negotiate the Uber ride. We took a group Uber which just squeezed in all the luggage and then took the 30 minute ride to the hotel.

 We are staying at the XO Hotel. Nice up scale hotel. Still small rooms like most Parisian hotels, but at least the elevator is large enough to carry both of us and our luggage. It is located just north of the Champs Elysees area in arrondissement 17. After we checked in (our room was available) and unpacked we had been traveling, and mostly awake, for 22 hours. However with a burst of adrenaline, and a desire to get on to Paris time we decided to forgo a nap and set out for the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise.

 A short walk took us to Marechal Juan plaza where we got on the #3 metro at the Pereire station. We purchased the 10 trip Metro package for 14.9 euro. The individual fare is 1.9 euro.

 It was about a 25 minute ride on the Metro. Outside of the US as I ride metros I always wonder why we cannot have metros that are as efficient, frequent and clean as those in the rest of the world.

 We exited at the Pere-Lachaise station from which it was a very short walk to the cemetery.

 Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise is a 44 acre cemetery which houses over 70,000 tombs, over 800,000 bodies and scores of memorials. It claims to be the most visited cemetery in the world. It was established in 1804 in response to neighborhood graveyards becoming full, perhaps as the Revolution's guillotines or Napoleon's wars increased the death rate. At the time it was in the outskirts of Paris and conflicted with the Parisian tradition of being buried in the quarter in which one lived. That tradition was successfully overcome when the city fathers exhumed the bodies of some local celebrities and reburied them here.

 Walking through the cemetery's grounds was like a stroll through a verdant sculpture garden. The leaves were turning and the tombs were many and frequently ornate. Paris residency is the only requirement to be buried here, so it has a cosmopolitan and in some cases, an international flavor to its inhabitants. We stopped by, among others, the grave sites of Chopin, (we directed a group of Japanese tourists to his site) Moliere, Balzac, Edith Piaf, Bizet, Gertrude Stein, (who was accompanied in death as in life by  her partner, Alice Toklas) and Imre Nagy. The last was an elaborate memorial since he is no longer actually buried there. His body had been there for over thirty years after he had been murdered by the Russians for leading a 1956 liberation movement that was finally shutdown by a Russian led Warsaw Pact invasion and the resulting fleeing of 250,000 Hungarian refugees. (Ironic that 60 years later the Hungarian government is among the leaders in the anti immigrant efforts in Europe.)  His body was repatriated to Budapest in the early 90s after the fall of the communist government. We saw that grave site last year. There were many other grave sites containing the remains of other famous people which we did not have time to visit.

However the rock stars of the cemetery are clearly Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Both of their sites are now protected from the favors of their fans. At Morrison's site there were lots of flowers and visitors who were bone many years after his death. At Wilde's site there are many lip stick kisses on the Plexiglass which surrounds his tomb.

One grave site has a supine sculpture of a Victor Noir, a nineteenth century journalist who at age 22 was killed in a duel. During his short life he established a reputation as a ladies man and consequently in death he has become a sex star as woman rub his crotch area , which now is very shiny, in an effort to improve fertility.

Around the outskirts of the cemetery are about a score of memorials to man made disasters and tragedies, from memorials to sea and airplane crashes and the Holocaust. Two of the most moving were a sturdy granite arch commemorating the victims of Dachau and small wire replicas of the children killed.  There were many visitors in the cemetery.

By the late afternoon we were running out of energy and it was getting close to closing time. I thought that if we exited the cemetery closest to the Metro station it would be a more pleasant walk. Instead we found one exit after another closed and so we had to walk twice the length of the cemetery to exit. On the metro ride back to the hotel I was almost falling asleep so we decided to eat dinner close to the hotel. Unfortunately it was about 6:45 and most restaurants  seem not to open for dinner until 7:00 at the earliest, many later than that.

We waited outside Bacino, an Italian restaurant, until it opened at 7. We were the first, and for a while the only customers. We both ordered a plate of the day and got a fish dish and salmon lasagna, Good food and inexpensive wine. The flour less chocolate cake for dessert was just average.
By 9:00 we were exhausted and early to bed.

 Jim Morrison grave site

Children's Holocaust memorial

   Strolling in the cemetey