Monday, Justine, Michelle and I took a nice, long walk starting off at Le Marais and on up to La Cemeterie de Pere Lachaise, the largest (only? oldest?) cemetery in Paris. The cemetery was amazingly dense, grave stuffed in with grave on top of grave replacing grave, and all of them works of art unto themselves. A brief slideshow of some of them are below. Also, I’ve got it marked on the Google Earth map that’s linked to from the right. You can switch to hybrid view and see it from a satellite view.
Note the grave of M. Noir in particular and where his reclining statue has been rubbed so frequently the brass always shines through. Apparently, if women stroke him there, it brings them fertility. We also visited Jim Morrison’s grave, as is de rigeur. Nothing special, really, some flowers and a bottle of scotch, a few notes.
There were a number of other famous people there, such as Oscar Wilde, but we neglected to get a map on our way in, which was just as well, I thought, as the folks wandering around sniffing after the "famous" graves seemed to be missing the beautiful but pedestrian sites all around.
At one point, I sought out the restroom and ended up in the mortuary under the chapel, almost toppling over the steel tables they use to prepare the bodies. Oops.
Afterwards, we returned to Justine’s and packed ourselves up to move to a new couchsurf host. Staying with Justine was a great pleasure. She was sweet and easy to get along with, the kind of person you can chat with or be silent with, as your moods suit. We’ll miss her.
Janice, if you’re reading this: there are a thousand Fournier’s in the cemetery. I’ve also seen your face on the streets of Paris often.
