Jewish tour and a cemetery

Today I took the 3 hour tour of the Jewish history of Paris and particularly of the neighborhood called La Marais. It was a very good tour but expensive. There were 9 of us, most from the U.S. After seeing the Notre Dame, under construction after the fire in 2019 (they are hoping to reopen it for the 2024 Olympics), we went to the Shoah Memorial.

60,000 cards on Jews in France, a small part of the total number. They were kept by the Vichy government  and hidden until not that long ago.

We walked through the La Marais neighborhood (popular these days with gay folks as well as Jews) and Flora brought us into a synagogue, bought us rugelach in a kosher bakery, and showed us where her grandfather had a deli, now a clothing shop, but with a plaque memorializing those killed in an act of antisemitism. 

Google Translate works great sometimes. 

After the tour ended I tried to eat at the famous L'As du Fellafel but the line was too long. So I sat at another falafel place and enjoyed the scene until the cigarette smoke got too much for me. 

Then I met Enrique at the Hotel de Ville which is City Hall and is HUGE (making meeting someone who is almost a total stranger difficult). We weren't allowed inside though Enrique tried. It was wonderful to be able to speak not only English with him but also Spanish; he helped me learn a bit more French, too!

Then we took a couple of subways (my first time!) to the Belleville  neighborhood.  We stopped at a cafe and then we went to the Père-Lachais cemetery. 

This cemetery was huge, seemed to go on and on

Oscar Wilde's tomb was in glass and a warning about leaving marks on it but there were many lipstick kisses on it. 

"La Vie en Rose" keeps going on in my head on this part of my trip. Merci, Edith!

Good ol' Fred Chopin

Jim Morrison's had a fence around it due to vandalism and the poor tree next to his tomb had a covering because people keep leaving chewed gum. Folks, what's wrong with you?

Colette's tomb was nice, no vandalism. The American woman at the Jim Morrison tomb had never heard of her.