Thoughtful

A strange day with a slow start after last night's late night. A bit of time looking over the images I have taken so far in the morning and then the cloudy day encouraged me to head along the Rue Chemin Vert from the hotel all the way to Pere Lachaise cemetery.
At the road junction across from the cemetery entrance three men were taking a picture with a large format camera on a tripod.
With my lack of planning I had no book or guidebook to show me where to go. I looked instead at the map inside the cemetery and tried to fix in my head a rough route to take in order to see the graves I wanted to see. Chopin and Morrison and Piaf and Wilde and Proust and then see how it goes.
But mostly I just wandered around looking at gravestones and memorials - more reminders of the Holocaust - large monuments commemorating tens of thousands who died in a particular camp and small family plots with one or two names. The weight of history hung heavy in the trees. I felt so small, like this snail I found making its way across a grave. I took some pictures, but I found myself struggling to come to terms with it all. How can I say it in a photograph? What it is I want to say. I only found out afterwards about the Mur des Federes, where the last group of Communards were shot in 1871. I wish now that I had seen it but that afternoon, with the dark grey clouds threatening rain and my own mood circling the edge of a pit perhaps it would have been too much. Something for my next visit.
And the evening meal lifted my spirits - visiting an excellent restaurant close to the hotel with S, speaking French to the waitresses and talking about so many different things with each other.