https://www.paris.fr/dossiers/bienvenue-au-cimetiere-du-pere-lachaise-47/ Archives

Scary Prague and Paris below our feet

24th October 202424th October 2024 funtime65

They’re two of Europe’s great cities and for the month that’s in it, let’s look at scary Prague and Paris below our feet.

Because our friends Cassideeeeh Trrrrravel (soz) have flagged up what’s under the flagstones in the Czech and French capitals for frighteningly good prices.

And while most will look up in wonder, and rightfully so, at the Astronomical Clock and Charles Bridge and Eiffel Tower and Montmartre in those cities.

For horror fans the fun is going underground.

Only here for the beer and the Fear

In Prague, the city of 1,000 spires the aspiring ghost lives down under the floorboards of Prague Fear House.

This being the country where more people drink beer per head of population than any other in the world your tour naturally revolves around a bar.

We’re told it is lit with dark, gothic interiors shades and gooey candy eyeballs garnishing tiki cocktail mugs.

Our grisly associates at Europehaunts tell us that there are a choice of hardcore and regular tours where you interact with actors.

Czech it out: Strahov Monastery Brewery in Czechia

All guaranteed to make you go shriek in the night and retailing from £5854pp.

As much as any nuclear bunker, the likes of which we saw on our dip down.

To that post-apocalyptic world on our Prague Communist Tour.

You’ll travel out on January 10, 2025 for two nights staying at the 4* Hotel St George. Prices from €249pps.

The fear of Dieu

Now, if Prague can be scarily good then mais oui Paris would put the fear of Dieu into you.

Particularly if you’re paying homage to Oscar Wilde or Edith Piaf at the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris at closing time.

And the Monsieur comes a-ringing his bell to get you out.

Paris is we know haunted by hunchbacks and horrifying hommes et madames from the other world.

Skulls and crosses: In the Catacombs in Paris

And boasts the largest underground ossuary in the world, the Catacombes of Paris.

A 1500m-long route 20 metres deep, for an extraordinary visit.

You’ll fly on January 17 for two nights.

And stay at the 4* The Originals, Maison Montmartre. Prices from €229pps.

Countries, Culture

Play nice on the Dublin-NY portal

15th May 202415th May 2024 funtime65

They’re brothers by a different mother, sisters by a different mister, so come on just play nice on the Dublin-NY portal.

Because, guess what, you’ve only just gone and got this interactive twinning of two of the world’s great cities suspended.

By flashing body parts and images of the Twin Towers on it.

Now we all know the bonds and family links that tie the Fair City and the City that Never Sleeps.

Including our own, with all four of my Irish mum’s brothers making their way to America and swelling its population.

And that Dubliners and New Yorkers share the same edgy, anti-establishment view of their world.

Sign of the times

But there is a line that’s been crossed and spoiled the fun for all those stepping into each other’s worlds.

Whether looking out of O’Connell Street into Broadway or back the other way.

All of which brings up again the Holidos and Don’ts of proper responses at tourist sites and historic attractions.

Particularly following a trip last week to the Hollywood sign.

Or at least as close as you can get which is about 800m.

Now it’s only 50 years since we could all, if we were fit enough, clamber up to the sign.

Before antisocial types forced the authorities’ hand through graffiti and desecration of the site.

Now if you try to get near the sign the LAPD will warn you off by loudspeaker that you will be fined $3,000 for your troubles.

Not that that seems to deter folk as we witnessed on our trek in the Hollywood Hills.

Please do not touch

The same has become true of Uluru, Ayer’s Rock to the old father-in-law when he lived out there and went walkabout.

Sometimes, of course, it’s mere overexcitement that causes people to go too far.

And mean that the guardians of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery have now had to put a glass screen over Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris.

Or entitlement as pushy photographers try to capture a corner of a cherub on the Sistine Chapel.

Of course, alas, tourist desecration is nothing new with the original Vandals, a tribe from the East, sacking Rome.

And generations helping themselves to Classical infrastructure lying around for their own home.

We should be grateful then for what is left and how complete the centrepiece of that other Classical powerhouse, Athens’ Acropolis is.

No thanks, of course, to Britain, who hold on graspingly to the Elgin Marbles.

Reach out across the oceans

Now, coming back to the question of today and our cri de coeur…

Modern technology allows us to reach out across oceans to the descendants of those who left generations ago and could not come back.

So play nice on the Dublin-NY portal because remember they’re brothers by a different mother, sisters by a different mister.

America, Countries, Europe, Ireland, UK

Dragging up the statue debate

9th April 20239th April 2023 funtime65

News that 70,000 fans have signed a petition to have an erection of Paul O’Grady (he’d appreciate that) put up in his hometown Birkenhead sees us dragging up the statue debate again.

Whether the proposed O’Grady statue over the Mersey from Liverpool would be of pets’ pal Paul with a beloved pooch.

Or his beloved alter ego, Lily Savage, a celebration of this towering figure would be most welcome.

We make no apologies for dredging up this contentious subject again because simply put statues are a fixture of every tourist’s city break trip.

And it is our mission to redress the balance.

By putting up more cultural figures on pedestals to match, replace or overtake the mystery military statues that look down on us.

Who’s a hero?

A horse, a horse: Stonewall Jackson at Manassas

Statues was all the talk in of all places Barbados a few years ago.

When the Ski Club of Virginia made their annual pilgrimage down to the Caribbean.

And our new friends from the Deep South were alerting us to the gathering storm.

Over the statues of the Confederate leaders proliferating there.

Which I saw for myself when I went out to Virginia.

And visited Manassas, site of the first fighting in the Civil War, and home to Stonewall Jackson.

And alas the fighting was to resume not long after on the streets again.

I was fortunate to illicit the opinions of those on both sides of the divide through further adventures in the Deep South.

And meet the likes of Dr Martin Luther King and his unfinished statue in Washington DC.

And Fannie Lou Hamer, the little big woman who got tired of being tired in Mississippi.

The extraordinary ordinary

In the name of dog: Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh

Of course for every celebrated soldier, conceited king or quaffed queen there are real heroes and heroines who have rightly been placed in marble and stone.

Such as Anne Frank in Amsterdam, Workers’ champion Jim Larkin in Dublin or devoted doggie Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh.

Ah yes, you’ll see the message we’re sending out here, more children, women, working-class heroes and animals.

Gay giants

And LGBTQ+ champions and more drag queens.

Our trawl of statues turns up unexpectedly and disappointingly precious few of either.

Again our beloved Ireland leads the way somewhat and in spite of its repressive Catholic past.

With the louche and lounging statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square.

While he is lauded and lipsticked in his gravestone in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, his last resting place.

Where Wilde led, the likes of Harvey Milk, the ‘Mayor of Castro Street’ in San Francisco.

Whose bust smiles at us from its plinth in City Hall, followed.

And Greenwich Village in New York, spiritual home for the Gay Liberation Movement, made a statement with a bust to Marsha P Johnson.

All of which makes the case for more statues which truly represent the people who live among them and represent them.

Redressing the balance

Alas, here in the UK as in most places representation is in short supply.

With only Alan Turing, the decoder who helped defeat Hitler, represented long after he was vilified and criminalised for his homosexuality.

So let’s hear it for the real heroes and heroines of our society.

Those we can identify with and look up to.

And that’s who I want to be looking at it on my city breaks.

And why I’m dragging up the statue debate again.