After the photos and the blog writing are all sorted out, I may put together a soundtrack to our trip around the world. There are a lot of great songs that are attached to a lot of great places in my mind. My taste in music has expanded a lot since the days of singing along to Dad's eight-track version of Freddy Fender's "Waisted Days and Waisted Nights" in the back seat of our Chevrolet Chevelle. No seat belts, no air conditioning, windows up, both parents smoking. Ahhh the good old days! With the possible exceptions of Juice Newton and Ratt, there's not much that I used to like that I don't still like now. In high school I was hooked on Iron Maiden and Led Zepplin. My love for David Wilcox, the Pogues and the Jeff Heally Band in my first few years of university expanded to Stan Rogers, Silly Wizard and the Masterless Men near the end of that chapter. These days, I'm as likely to be listening to George Jones, Tom Waits or Blue Rodeo as I am George Jones, Steve Earle or John Prine. I pretty much love it all. There was a time in 1989, however, when all I wanted to listen to was the Doors. The double album greatest hits collection was the first compact disc I ever owned. It was probably the only one I owned for a while. The coolest guys I knew seemed to know something about the Doors that I didn't. Maybe I just wasn't smoking the right stuff. Nonetheless, I resolved to spend as many hours as I could in a dark room listening to their haunting percussions, keyboards and vocals in my head phones.
In my second year of military college, while my civilian friends were living it up in real life universities, my roommates and I were each given the privilege to put one poster on the walls of our barrack rooms above our beds. It had to be evenly spaced between the floor, ceiling and walls. No nudity. The unwritten expectation was that the poster should be of a suitable military character. Most guys put up images of the SnowBirds flying in formation or the movie posters from Top Gun or Das Boot. The engineers all chose their favorite Albert Einstein characatures. Like the penguin in the Far Side comic belting out "I gotta be me!" I opted for the now iconic image of a shirtless, shaggy haired, glassy-eyed Jim Morrison with his arms stretched wide, Christ-like. The fact that my superior officers were decidedly unimpressed with my choice of wall art was not the first or last hint that I probably hadn't chosen a career path most in tune with my younger self.
We've stopped by some important milestones in Jim Morrison's short life in the last year. After graduating from UCLA, he lived on Venice Beach for a year or so and started The Doors while there. He wrote many of the band's most popular tunes while living on someone's roof, subsisting on canned beans and LSD. Morrison's father was the US Admiral in command of American naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the seminal incidents that took place there in the prelude to the Vietnam War. At the age of 27, at the height of his fame, Jim Morrison died under a cloud of mystery in a bar on Paris' right bank. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Pere Lachaise Cemetery not far away. The first headstone was placed on Morrison's grave around the time that I started paying attention to his music and poetry, 17 years after his death. It immediately became a pilgrimage site for fans who flocked there to party, get high, write poetry and speculate about his death. At the time, I'd never traveled overseas and didn't have much of a desire to do so. But I do remember lying on my hard military school bunk with my headphones on, looking up at his poster and vowing to one day go to Paris and drink a bottle of whisky at his grave (LSD has never been my thing). I didn't care if I saw anything else while I was there. In fact, all the better if I didn't. "What did you do in Paris Tim?" "Got drunk at Jim Morrison's grave." "Eiffel Tower?" "Nope." Arc de Triomphe?" "Nada." "Napoleon's Tomb?" "Never heard of him." Sadly, I never had the time, nerve or money to do it.
Today, on our last afternoon in Paris, I hopped on the metro and headed under the River Seine and over to Pere Lachaise cemetery. One of the great things about having a week in Paris is that once you check off the five or six sites that one must see, you can pick one or two more obscure ones that really speak to your personal interests. You can also take some time to just live like a Parisienne: hanging out in a sunny sidewalk cafe for a few hours drinking wine and watching the city pass by; lying under a shade tree in a park counting the clouds; or simply reading - anything, anywhere, anytime.
After arriving by train from London via the Chunnel, we spent our first day getting our bearings on a bus tour. This was a good, and relaxing way to find out a little about the major sites and put together a plan of attack for the following days' sightseeing. Our tiny studio apartment was located in Montparnasse, on the the Left Bank of the Seine. Surrounded by boulangeries, boucheries, cafes, creperies and bistros, there was no trouble finding something good to eat. At least once a day we sat ourselves down in a line of neat little chairs surrounding a metal table facing the street for one of our meals or just a snack and glass of wine. The service and the food was always outstanding. The prices were as well, but we were still numbed by London at that point. These were our favorite moments in Paris, when we truly felt like we were living the life of a denizen of the world's most visited city.
Having a bit of extra time also allowed us to be flexible when things didn't go as planned. After finding the catacombs closed for the day due to yet another french strike, we instead hoofed it down to Notre Dame, taking our time en route as we strolled through the Latin Quarter. When we showed up for our 1:00 pm tour of the Louvre to find that the guide was MIA, we rebooked for 4:00 pm and walked the Champs Élysées instead. Mira had done a research project on the Louvre prior to the visit and she gave us an excellent introduction to the history and exterior of the building before we went in. It was raining on the day we'd planned to climb the Eiffel Tower. Rather than postpone, we put on our raincoats, popped open the umbrellas we'd picked up in Florence and headed out. The lineup was virtually non-existent because of the rain. Halfway up the stairs the rain stopped and the sky cleared. Halfway down the tower lights came on to the ooohhs and ahhhhs of the gathered masses below. We all agreed that it was a night to remember as we walked home, looking back every few minutes at the golden icon shrinking steadily behind us.
One day we did pretty much nothing. The girls had been up until midnight on the nights of our visits to the Louvre and Eiffel Tower so we needed a break. It was raining so we did some homework, read our books, sat in a cafe next to a laundromat as our clothes washed and watched a movie (It took 4 hours to watch the Da Vinci Code - soooo many questions). It may very well have been our best day in Paris and certainly the most relaxing.
The only lineups we had to endure were at the Catacombs when we returned a second time. Despite getting there an hour before opening, the line stretched nearly all the way around the block. The girls survived the three hour wait by hanging out with some fellow travelers from Seattle they'd met in a cafe across the street while we waited in line. Every now and then we'd wave them over to bring us some "pain chocolat" or hot coffee. Once we were inside and underground, the sight of over six million skeletons stacked neatly like chord wood was enough to keep the whining at bay. It was creepy to be sure, but well worth the wait. We ended the morning with Crepes and home brewed apple cider at a well-known place near our apartment. Out of this world delicious. The girls spent the afternoon souvenir shopping while I headed off on my own to take care of some unfinished business.
After a year or so, I lost interest in the Doors. Maybe I overdosed on it in that one year. Or perhaps it was crowded out by a rekindled love for the Irish/Scottish music of my youth, rediscovered at places like the Old Dublin Pub in Montreal or the Wellington in Kingston. I still have my double cd greatest hits album, but it's buried in a box somewhere with the rest of those old fashioned physical storage devices that once seemed so cutting edge. A few years ago when I took a day to transfer all my CDs over to mp3, I didn't even bother to crack the case on the Doors album. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what was motivating me to take three trains over to Pere Lachaise Cemetery this afternoon. It was raining a steady rain as I followed my map through the maze of ancient tombs and headstones, passing by other famous graves like Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Chopin. The tune of "Riders on the Storm" began playing softly in my head, accompanied by the real rain, as I approached the place I'd looked at in photos for years. Of the twenty or so people standing in front of the grave, I'm pretty sure that I was the only one born in the same century as Morrison. As I stood there wondering why I was so moved by the moment, it dawned on me that I wasn't there to visit Jim Morrison. I was there to visit the 19 year old me. It was good to see the little b****** again. After a shot of Jack Daniels in a cafe outside the cemetery, I went back to our apartment and downloaded a few tunes for the kids. They were curious as to what "Light My Fire" was all about. I told them it was about Johnny and Judy sparking up the stove at the camp for us before we arrived on a cold winter day. They didn't buy it.
Tomorrow we take a train to Belgium for some more Newfoundland and Canadian history. Only two weeks left until "The End" of this great adventure. It's certainly going fast now.
Au revoir France!