Paris Adventures Part Deux

A cemetery might not seem like a hot spot on your tour itinerary but in Paris it is. There are several cemeteries that have famous 'residents'. They come complete with maps and hordes of tourists. Izan and I wanted to see Jim Morrison's grave and we thought it was in the Montmartre cemetery.

Luckily her landlord corrected us and told us it's actually in Pere Lachaise. Otherwise we would have spent a couple of hours wandering around, maybe finding Degas' grave but definitely no Morrison.



Francois (Izan's landlord) said that all we had to do was follow the tourists in the cemetery. They all go to see Jim Morrison's grave, and that's it. Everyone seemed to have maps when we got there and when we asked the lady at the entrance she told us that we had to go to a cafe Frances across the street and get it.

We decided to just take a picture of the map and use that as a guide. Izan was pretty sure that we would end up in the cafe only to be told that they had run out of maps,

"That's so typically French."

A lot of poets, singers, and artists are buried here. There are also quite a few family crypts. Like the one above. This one was open for some reason.

Most of the graves are pretty old but there are some from the 80's and 90's like this chic one above. It was difficult to find Morrison's grave despite how famous it is. We kept ending up in unlikely places. And everyone was looking for it and not finding it. Including this crazy Italian who asked us for directions in Italian, Izan gave him directions in French and on his way out he told us where to go in Italian.

Finally we saw a guy in a Doors t-shirt holding a bunch of Doors records who was practically jumping from one grave to another. He didn't even turn around and yelled the directions in French to us.

SUCESSS!

The inscription at the bottom is in Greek by the way. It's easily the most visited grave here. Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde are buried here too but their graves are somewher at the end of the cemetery and the paths seemed to all twist, turn, and diverge. So we decided to look for a famour grave nearby. Which is how we came across Moliere's grave.

He's a famous French poet and he had a pretty generous gravesite. All fenced in and protected. We called it a day after that and headed to the Champs Elysee. Yes, I know that this should have come before the Part Une post but oh well....

xoxoxo