Marilyn on her wanderings with the boys

Here's what Marilyn wrote to her buddies yesterday. She and the boys have been exploring the city far and wide ...

having ridden the washington metro for a few years, carter is an accomplished subway rider. and happy as can be to ride the paris metro. he knows which lines run near home. and both he and calvin know the neighborhood metro stops. calvin can get us from the metro stop to the apartment at the end of a day.

today we spent a lot of time on the metro. if paris were a big circle, their apartment is at about 8 o'clock, on the bottom on the left hand side. today we visited pere lachaise cemetery, which would be at about 2 o'clock on the circle, on the top on the right side. it was a long ride half way around the city. carter can read a metro map nicely, i knew where we wanted to go and calvin stayed close, so we were in business.

the metro stop where we ended up is one of the beautiful art deco paris metro entrances. carter recognized it immediately and we spent some time enjoying the beauty of it.

then we headed into pere lachaise. i have always loved cemeteries and this is a terrific one. some cemeteries have beautiful art in stone and metal. like outdoor sculpture gardens. this one has all that and stained glass windows. pere lachaise is an oldish paris cemetery, maybe 150 years old. (Chris notes: just over 200, with Moliere among the first buried.) most parisians and most others planted with them in pere lachaise are catholics. catholic cemeteries are more distinctive than most other cemeteries. and even among catholic cemeteries, pere lachaise is a doozy.

the size is impressive. perhaps on a scale with arlington cemetery across the river from washington. it is on sloping and rolling hillsides with a surprising number of trees. many of which are just coming to bud and blossom.

most distinctive are the crypts, sculptures and sepulchres that crowd the cemetery. nearly the entire surface of the cemetery is of stone. one crypte is adjacent to the next on either side. a few cryptes aren't much to speak of, just slabs of stones. but the cemetery is a city in miniature, with one sepulchre vying for another in height and elaborateness. tiny chapels rising 10-15 feet in height on their 3 by 6 foot plots of ground.

we happened upon a bit of grass in the midst of all this and it seemed so out of place, calvin and carter both gazed at the grass and commented upon it for a few minutes before we could move on.

in addition to many very well known inhabitants, pere lachaise is known for its cats. said be to 1000 or more, living underground and in the cryptes and sepulchres, the boys were fascinated with almost everything about the cemetery. i worried about calvin getting lost or at least separated from me. the pathways and roads are fine cobble-stone affairs. but we walked amongst the crypts themselves, and there was
often not enough space for me to pass between a pair. the boys lead the way, sometimes carter in the lead and sometimes calvin. and, of course, sometimes one going one way and one going the other. the heights of the cryptes and the narrowness of the spaces made it seem far more like being trapped in a maze than a leisurely afternoon stroll in a cemetery. but the boys didn't seem to notice.

calvin is fond of churches and he was delighted with all the tiny stained glass windows in the sepulchres. carter read a lot of names and inscriptions. i enjoy
the sculpture and metalwork. so we were all quite content to meander.

sadly, however, we saw nearly no cats. the boys checked out all sorts of underground reveals and peeked into lots of decrepit sepulchres, but are certain they only spotted one or two cats. carter and calvin and i are all allergic to cats. nevertheless the boys are exceedingly fond of the critters. carter suggested, to my great surprise, that we needed to come back to the cemetery at night, because that's
when the cats are the most active. he mentioned this about a dozen times.

i think it would be fun for betsy and chris to take the boys back to spend the night at pere lachaise sometime. or perhaps when other visitors are in town and would like to do something special with the boys, they could go again to pere lachaise and contrive to get locked in. the boys will love it.

we left pere lachaise, very happy for our visit. and took the metro home again. by another very long route. it was a wonderful day. yet again.

love,

marilyn