Pere Lachaise, Paris, December 2019

The best way to spend a cold, grey Paris afternoon: walk the twenty minutes along Rue de la Republique from Place de la Republique (or get the Metro, if they're not on strike). Find the gate, make your way up the hill, surrounded by centuries of Paris's dead. I went for the writers, but found Chopin, Jim Morrison, and plenty of others.

You can try and use a map, but you'll get lost. The roads, lanes and small, overgrown paths; the ruined family vaults; the crematorium. But that's the whole point. Get lost. The dead aren't going anywhere.

A few locals, with flowers for some dead aunt or uncle, a couple of American twenty-somethings in search of The Doors, but mostly just people succumbing to the views of Paris, the overgrown bushes and wild, ankle-deep forest of dead leaves and stray rubbish.