A beautiful Sunday to meander around a beautiful city. Plus Shefali needed some quiet time to do some work, so I needed to make myself scarce for the day. A new game I like to play, let's see how long I can stay away from the apartment and occupy my time with!


I spent the morning getting my resume printed and copied, walked around Montmartre and checked out the artists in the square. Then went off to seek the resting grounds of Emile Zola, Edgar Degas and the man who invented the sax! The Cimetiere Montmartre. The cemeteries here are gorgeous stone works, such detail and some of these tombs, the graves are still being maintained by (I assume) family members, still bringing flowers to adorn them. Degas is one of my favorite painters, so I wanted to see what is tomb resembled.



After the cemetery, I wanted to go to a little canal, Canal St. Martin, from the film Amelie, wherein she skips the stones. What I didn't realize from the film is that this small canal is like the Panama canal, and I arrived at the perfect moment to witness a boat passing through the sections.

Off to l'Arenes de Lutece, an old roman arena from the 2nd century AD; destroyed in 280AD, rediscovered and restored in the 20th century (gotta love travel books, thanks John!) It was neat, to sit in this arena and go through my notes of what else to see in this city. There's an elementary school attached to the arena - how cool is it that these kids get to play here at recess!?!?

I tried to go to a contemporary art gallery, Fondation Cartier (no not the diamonds!) but it was closed until the end of the month, so off to la Maison Europeenne de la Photographie (European House of Photography). There was some great photo work on display, Gabriele Basilico had some amazing pictures of Beirut circa 1991 of destroyed and abandoned city streets and buildings. Also there were other works on display, not just photography; it was a neat place. A lot of the museums/galleries are held in old mansions - it's really quite interesting to walk around them in and of themselves.