Remembrances and Music

We've had a few quiet days since returning from Antwerp and Bruges.  Sunday May 29 was la fête des mères en France.  We went to the Bastille market in the morning and then went for a walk to the Luxembourg Gardens.  There were a number of free concerts taking place in parks around town.  This jazz band was playing in a park near Notre Dame.

Jazz band in park near Notre Dame

It was a beautiful day and we caught some rays in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Alain in the Luxembourg Gardens with palm trees

We then went for a drink at Les Editeurs, a wonderful cafe near the Odeon Metro.

Trying a diabolo menthe (lemonade and mint syrup) at Les editeurs

Home for a salmon dinner.

On Monday May 30, we went for a run in the morning.  Alain did 9.3 km and Toby did 6.5 km. We then walked to Père Lachaise cimetiere, which Alain missed last month, when he had a cold.  It is the largest cemetery in Paris, covering 48 hectares.  300, 000 people are buried there.  We found a few graves of some famous folks.

Better picture of the Edith Piaf gravesite with lots of flowers

Rossini

Haussmann family

The Oscar Wilde monument was the only one with lots of graffiti

View of the entire Oscar Wilde monument

Colette

We then returned to the corner of the cemetery in which there are a series of monuments dedicated to most of the Nazi concentration camps.  They are very powerful, some of the sculptures very difficult to look at.  The guidebooks do not mention these monuments.

Sachsenhausen near Berlin

Bergen Belsen

Ravensbruck

Auschwitz

Near the concentration camp memorials, were a number of memorials and graves of members of the French Communist Party.

In memory of the communist women who gave their lives in WWII

Central Committee of the French Communist Party

Finally, there was a memorial to the 147 Communards who were shot at this wall, on May 28, 1971, ending the Paris Commune.

It was a very hot day- 27C and we ending the afternoon with a drink at a lovely outside terrance near our apartment.

On Tuesday May 30, the weather turned cool for the day (16C).  We walked down to the FNAC Montrparnasse to hear a free jazz concert with the Pura Fé trio.  She is a member of the Tuscarora Nation and was in Paris promoting her new album: A Blues Night in North Carolina.  Her trio included Cary Morin on guitar and Pete Knudson on drums.  Great music.  They did a tune called Borders which included a memorable line: "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us".

Pura Fe

Pete Knudson (on a cajon drum- Peruvian) and Cary Morin

Back home for a steak dinner.

On Wednesday June 1, the weather turned warmer again and we walked down to the tourist office to get some brochures for events in June.  We went to an early showing of Woody Allan's new film- Minuit à Paris.  It is a delightful, light film - a real hommage to Paris.  Owen Wilson was wonderful as the Woody Allan stand-in, who is transported to Paris in the 1920s and meets Hemingway, TS Eliot, the Fitzgeralds, etc.  We recognized most of the locations of the beautiful shots.

Thursday June 2 was another beautiful day- 24C.  We went for a morning run, did some food shopping and then went to the Places Vosges, one of our favourite parks, to read and sun.

The DSK affair continues to make news.  Amazing that the polls show that the French believe it's a conspiracy.

Katha Pollitt has a great article in the Nation - see http://www.thenation.com/article/160958/dear-france-were-so-over

Ended the day with a drink at Chez Julien and dinner chez nous.