The holiday season in Paris

'Twas the month before Christmas, and all through ile-de-Paris,
The streets were filled with lights, and shoppers on a spree.

Well, I'm definitely not a poet, so I won't torture you with my poor attempts. Christmas time is pretty in Paris... lots of fun lights are strung up in the streets and the department stores put out their nicest, flashiest displays:









It even SNOWED yesterday! It didn't stick, but it was nice to see. I'm still planning on seeing the lights on Champs-Elysees-- I'll post the pics as soon as I take them :-)

Over the weekend, I did some sightseeing in the 11th arrondissement. I started off by visiting Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise ("A" on the map below), the largest cemetary in the ile-de-Paris. Supposedly, it's the world most visited cemetary, packed with beautiful mausoleums, trees and Jim Morrison's grave. The Cemetary was opened by Napoleon I after another cemetary was closed, however due to how far it was from the center of the city, the administrators had to "advertise" for funerals there by bringing in the remains of La Fontaine (poet) and Moliere (writer/actor). Now the cemetary holds over 300,000 remains.

As I continued to walk, I came across the St. Ambroise Church ("B" on the map below) named for St Ambrose of Milan. St. Ambrose was famous for being accidentally elected Bishop of Milan in the late 300s (A.D). At the election for a new Bishop, Ambrose went to address the rowdy crowd and someone yelled "Ambrose, Bishop!" and so he was. After being elected, he was effective in converting Arians to Catholics and was later martyred along with his brother and sister.

I can't say that the day ended perfectly-- I had meant to walk northwest from St. Ambroise and walk along the canal, but it got colder, I took a wrong turn, got fed up and took the Metro home. There's always another day...