I’ve finally been making progress in my protracted skirmish with long Covid, allowing G and I to take a holiday which wouldn’t have been possible a few months ago. G had never been to Paris, so we decided to include well-trodden highlights and new favourites. A trainzoom from London to Gare du Nord, a bus to our hotel, and we were off on a stroll to the Luxembourg gardens. We found refuge from the sizzling sunshine in the shade of …
Last week, I finally visited Père Lachaise – the world’s most popular (and, perhaps, most beautiful) necropolis. Stretched across a formidable hundred acres of Parisian hillside with over a million interments and a veritable galaxy of star residents, it’s difficult to believe that this cemetery wasn’t popular in its early days because of its nondenominational status and somewhat remote location. It took a strategic transfer of Moliere’s remains to win the people’s favour back in the 1800s. These days, greeting …
The first time I visited the Paris catacombs, it was the summer of 1999 and I was spending one month riding the EuroRail and sleeping in hostels (and on floors, and in parks) while backpacking across six European countries with my best friend. It was the greatest thing we could think to do after my graduation – our goal was to visit as many of the attractions listed in the Weird Europe travel guidebook as we could – so we …