Paris proves
irresistible
to tourists

PARIS — It’s not easy to visit France without going
through Paris and paying homage, which is what the royal
road-builders had in mind, and today’s travellers are no

exception.

In journeys down the Loire and
up the Marne this summer I met
people on bikes, barges and
balloons, and they all had one
thing in common: they had just
been to Paris or they would be
going there before leaving.

Some go to see the Eiffel
Tower, if only, as Guy de
Maupassant said, to enjoy the
view of Paris without having to
tcok at the damn thing.

Others have gone up by bike
and skateboard, jumped off it by
parachute and hang-glider, and
one Spanish tourist, scarcely in a
holiday mood, pushed his wife
over the side.

Another thing is that everyone
has guidebooks these days, which
along with community newspapers
must be the growth industry of
tke °90s.

I took along Cheap Eats in
Paris by Sandra Gustafson (Rain-
coast, $11.95) and the selections [
tried were superb: A la Tour de
Montlhery, a bistro near the
Louvre, and Au Pierrot de La
Butte, in Montmartre.

Both were reasonably priced
(dinner with wine about $70 for
two), the atmosphere was ex-
cellent, and they were not overrun
with tourists, although it was
amusing to see that the people at
a nearby table in the Montmartre
restaurant also had a Cheap Eats
book.

There is also a Cheap Sleeps in
Paris guidebook, but I had a
rendezvous at La Tremoille, an el-
egant little hotel of 112 rooms and
suites located in a quiet area off
the Avenue Georges V.

Such a hotel, with a know!-
edgeable concierge and a house-
keeper who can produce an iron-
ing board in a moment, can make
a short stay into one that is mem-
orabie and relaxing.

At La Tremoille a woman with
a North American accent asked
where I was from, and when [
replied Vancouver she said, ‘‘Such
a nice town. I own a paper’ mill
there.”

Americans were in the majority
at the Moulin Rouge that night.
At the next table a mother and
daughter from Texas asked if we
had come across any Mexican res-
taurants.

The show was great entertain-
ment, better by far than Las
Vegas at its best, but the can-can
routine was disappointing. [ve
seen better in Dawson City.

I rode the Metro, still a simple,
superb, inexpensive way to get
around, to eastern Paris and the
Pere-Lachaise cemetery, a hilltop
city of the celebrated dead. Here

{

h RIGHT, BC

David
Wishart

TRAVEL TIPS

lie Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf,
Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein,
anc, to the regret of the
maintenance manager, Jim Mor-
rison.

Young fans of the American
musician, who died in Paris in
1971, flock here with their graf-
fiti. Scores of tombstones have
“Jim’’ scrawled on them, and ar-
rows pointing to his grave, a seedy
shrine where amid litter and wine
bottles with wilting roses, half a
dozen young men and women
keep a vigil.

Morrison’s bust has been stolen,
but somebody has posted a picture
of him on another tomb and writ-
ten on it ‘Happy Birthday.”

Nearby, on the tomb of the
headmistress of a girls’ school, is
the first line of one of Morrison’s
songs, ‘‘Show me the way to the
next whisky bar.’’

Finding Wilde’s grave is not so
easy. Two young Americans, ask-
ed for directions, say ‘‘Who’s
Oscar Wilde?"’

Then, there it is, a magnificent
tomb with the stone figure of a
young Egyptian god, paid for by a
woman admirer. How Wilde could
have used the money when he was
“dying beyond his means’’ in a
miserable Paris hotel that now
cashes in on the connection with
rip-off rates.

The same cemetery has the
graves of the Communards, me-
morials to the French whe died in
German concentration camps, and
the graves of leading communists.
Which makes one ask: is Pere-
Lachaise for Christians, or
celebrities?

It is Paris, and a reason to go
there.

Getting to Paris: Canadian
Airlines now has Boeing 767 ser-
vice to Charles de Gaulle airport.

TRAVEL

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Sunday, October 7, 1990 - North Shore News - 43

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