[belated blog post] “sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why, would i wanna be anywhere else?”

What does one usually do on their last day in Paris? If my trip had begun with an extremely fast blister-raising pace and a prepared list of sights to see, then it ended with a more aimless and the slowest of strolls.

I began my last day with a visit in the afternoon to the Père Lachaise cimetière. A cemetery? Sounds depressing, until you see how mystically beautiful overgrown and cobwebbed family chapels, shrines, and embellished tombstones can be in the springtime. Père Lachaise is the biggest cemetery in Paris, and comes with maps that vendors at the entrance will try to sell to you for 2,50€. I decided to forego this paid option, and found a map on a board inside, with a directory for the gravesites of famous actors, composers, political leaders, singers, writers, which are indicated by their corresponding number on the map. It is also such a big cemetery that it is organised into 97 divisions by numerous avenues and chemins, and includes a chapel, a crematorium, and a roundabout. Grabbing my mini Moleskine cahier, I scribbled down several notable names and their numbers and division sites, took a photo of the map with my iPhone, and set off down the sun-spotted, tree-lined paths.

last days in Cahors…

♥ One my favourite stalls in the bi-weekly marché, the spice seller! I love how the herbs and spices are individually displayed in rolled down cloth sacks with handwritten cardboard signs…

♥ What’s in season right now? les fraises et les asperges…miam miam!

♥ An infamous and grotesquely fascinating statue of a naked woman (?) near the marché next to the St. Étienne Cathedral…

♥ Une dernière  soirée with some of my élèves…photo taken before too many drinks were had ;) “C’était le feu!” 

♥ A photo on a sign outside le parc Tassart that I noticed was taken by  my friend, one of the English teachers! I was walking by when I happened to see her name under the photograph!   

♥ One last glance down my neighbourhood…my front door was just to the right. Fun fact, the owner of the pizzeria a few steps down told me “je t’aime” the first week I was in Cahors. I didn’t go back for months, haha. 

♥ One last precarious tiptoe on my windowsill for a peek of the Tour des Pendus over the red-tiled roof of the Ensemble Scolaire Saint-Étienne next door, whose students would wake me in the mornings with their chatter and laughter…

♥ Speaking of lycées, one last photo of the Lycée Clément-Marot where I worked as an English assistant.

♥ One last look at the Statue of Gambetta at les Allées Fénelon in the late evening sunlight…The statue was directly across from La Mie Câline, so…

♥ …One last éclair café from La Mie Câline, my favourite! 

♥ One last gaze upon the belltower of Gambetta collège the same evening…same one featured in my friend’s photo above!

♥ Un dernier spectacle…an orchestral and choral concert given by lycéen(ne)s of the Lot department at L’Espace Valentré in Cahors . Many of my students were performing that night, some of them even had solos! Very entertaining and impressive musical displays, and they even played “Le Choeur des esclaves” (Chorus of the Hebrew slaves) from the Verdi opera Nabucco, which I grew up listening to, so it brought me to tears, as it reminded me of my dad.  

♥ One last farewell message…

♥ Mais, c’est pas la fin! I’ll be back one day, Ciao for now! ♥

 

la petite flâneuse

When I went to Shakespeare & Co. on my third day in Paris, after much browsing and deliberation, I finally resurfaced into the warm early evening with The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris, by Edmund White.Of course, not two minutes after leaving this splendid bookshop, which included a tiny, rickety staircase at the back leading up to a Sylvia Beach bibliothèque with a majestic view of the Notre Dame across the Seine river, and to a group of older people singing along to a man playing English tunes on a piano upstairs, I was accosted by a group of brash young men with a selfie stick who tried to persuade me to take a selfie with them. Covering my face with my Paris metro map, I scurried away to the crosswalk where they followed and attempted to ask the policewoman on the corner for a photo as well‪. Oh, Paris.

Interestingly, White mentions this cultural practice in The Flâneur, when he clarifies, that “unlike Americans [and Canadians!], who feel menaced or insulted by lingering looks on the street, French women – and men! – consider la séduction to be one of the arts of living and an amorous glance their natural due” (44). After reading this, I tried to reconcile myself to this fact at any other times I felt “menaced or insulted by lingering looks [and suggestive compliments] on the street” – and there were many! If in Cahors, I feel overly appraised by men, in Paris (and in Lyon), I was drowning in invasive stares. I miss Canada for the way I was able to saunter through crowds without a single unwelcome remark. I miss being able to smile frankly at strangers without fear of unintentionally suggesting an invitation.

But, the lovely thing about Paris, as White shows us through his writing, is that Paris is the “land of novelty and distraction, is the great city of the flâneur – that aimless stroller who loses himself in the crowd, who has no destination and goes wherever caprice or curiosity directs his or her steps” (16). “Paris is a world meant to be seen by the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail,” he says (34).  White also quotes Baudelaire’s description of the flâneur as someone who is “not at home, but [he feels] at home everywhere,” “for the perfect flâneur…it’s an immense pleasure to take up residence in…whatever is seething, moving, evanescent and infinite” (36).

mad about Monet

For our second day in Paris, my Canadian gal pal and I decided to take a daytrip to Giverny, a tiny village nestled in the lush Normandic hills 40 minutes west of Paris by train, to visit Claude Monet’s house, water lily gardens, and the Japanese bridge that features so predominantly in his Impressionist paintings.

“Let’s wake up early and take the second train of the morning from Paris to Vernon, so we can take the corresponding bus to Giverny and get there before 11am!” said the two notorious night owls, at two in the morning, before collapsing into careless unconsciousness. They woke up after noon the next day. They did not get out of bed right away either.