Pere Lachaise

 I have been lucky enough to visit Paris many many times over the years, the first time being in 1972 when I was only around 9 years old. It has been a city that I felt drawn back to and where I have always found something new to keep my interest alive.

One of the places I had wanted to see was the Pere Lachaise cemetery but until a trip in 2023 I had never really had the opportunity to do so. I knew it was the resting place of many famous people and this draws many tourists to visit and when you go in you are handed a map showing where many celebrities from the worlds of literature, philosophy, music, art and fashion are buried. While I was curious to a certain degree to see the final resting places for some of these famous people I was more interested in the scale of the cemetery and the air of calm in the heart of a city. It was like a small town with streets and alleyways, paved and marked with street signs. There was birdsong and squirrels, the colours and scents of autumn and rather than hunt for famous graves I looked at the memorials for ordinary people and reflected on what their lives might have been like. I didn't photograph Jim Morrison's grave or Oscar Wilde's, or Edith Piaf's but I reflected on the other 70,000 people whose life journey had ended here.

I shot these images in black and white because on a bright autumn day the colours didn't really suit the atmosphere I wanted to convey. This is a calm but sombre place and where I have used colour it is to highlight detail in some of the crypts that were open or damaged in some way.

I am glad that I finally got the chance to visit the cemetery and in some ways I am glad that it took me so long to get there. Perhaps, had I gone when I was younger I may have been drawn more to the celebrity graves rather than being able to appreciate the serenity and beauty of the place. I won't say any more about the individual images but hope as you look at them you will get a sense of what I mean and how I felt. If you feel so inclined why not leave a comment. 

Along the Route des Vins

Alsace is a remarkably beautiful region of France with the rivers, mountains, forests and vineyards and along the wine route there are many wonderful towns with narrow streets, and colourful houses.

One such town is Berghiem which is in the valley below the château du Haut Koenigsbourg. It is a quiet little town surrounded by vineyards.

The gate tower stands at one end of the main street and while there is no gate to bar the way now the town has a defensive wall and moat and the houses that encircle the town have stood for centuries.
 

The Great Wall On Tour

Today's selection is from around the streets of Cesky Krumlov. 

First off we have two shots of a pair of buskers. I was going to call the post The Ace of Spades because of the tattoo on the guitarists leg but I picked the alternate title when I decided to include the other two pictures of the groups of tourists.

I can't remember the tunes these guys were playing but they were pretty good and in the narrow cobbled streets the sound carried really well.

Now what you may notice is that virtually everyone else in these  pictures is Chinese. Almost everywhere we went on our roadtrip we were amazed at the vast number of Chinese people. Even in sleepy little towns all of a sudden a coach load of tourists would arrive and then they would rush around, in and out of shops and local attractions and then back onto the bus to be whisked off somewhere else. 

The group in the third picture are all listening to audio descriptions as they're on a walking tour, it struck me as I watched them that although they were listening intently they were not actually taking much notice of what was around them, instead they had found a spot in the shade to listen to the message before heading off to the next point on the tour.

In the final image though the small group were exploring on their own. I did wonder what they made of this bohemian town.

Medieval Masterpiece

Here is another selection of shots from the wonderful medieval city of Carcassonne.

Within the extensive outer walls is a small town built around a central citadel (see pictures 1 & 2) this is the only part of the city that has an entrance fee and was the only part of the city we didn't visit because when we arrived it was only twenty minutes til closing time and although my son could get in for free they wanted to charge me full price even though there was no way of seeing everything.  So that's something for the next time I guess.

Around the walls of this citadel there was a nicely laid out vegetable garden and then there is a network of narrow cobbled streets and beautiful buildings. One benefit of arriving late in the day was that the streets were largely deserted and so very few people to clutter up the shots.