Cemeteries

Continuing on my somewhat morbid theme of the day, I moved on to Cimetière du Montparnesse. When I first went in, I was taken aback because it's very unlike cemeteries from home. Instead of stones, the majority of grave sites are actual tombs. There were a bunch of people/tourists in the cemetery, and they even had tour guides to point out specific graves. I decided to just kind of wander and see what I came across. I ended up stumbling onto Serge Gainsbourg's tomb. It was PACKED. Not only was there a group of people taking pictures, people had left notes, trees, ornaments, CDs, metro tickets, even smoked cigarettes (which is nicer than it sounds). So after I saw his, I was like, "Wow, if Serge got that much attention, I can't wait to see Jean-Paul Sartre's grave!" Plus he's buried with Simone de Beauvoir, and while I've never read her stuff, she's always seemed like an interesting person (talk about power couples). So after a while of wandering, I finally found it- and was surprised to see almost nothing on it! I couldn't believe that a singer like Serge Gainsbourg (he's good and everything, but come on) would attract so much more attention than 2 such influential writers/ philosophers! But then I was thinking, maybe all his fans are existentialists and therefore don't put much stock in stuff like tombstones.. or even death really.







So after I finished wandering around there, I metro'ed over to Père-Lachaise, another famous Parisian cemetery. I'd tried visiting here on my third day in Paris, but it was closed because of the snow. Someone had described visiting here as "haunting" and I would have to say I agree. It was absolutely gorgeous, with cobblestone paths and trees lining the walkways. It's also huge, and I didn't have a map with me, so I did some wandering around here as well. Finally, a Frenchman caught my attention by yelling "Jee-mee Morr-ee-son" (that was my phonetic spelling of how he pronounced "Jimmy Morrison") and pointed me in the right direction. So I at least got to see Jim Morrison's grave, which actually has a small gate in front of it, I guess to keep people back. After I saw his, I walked around a little more. It really is a gorgeous cemetery, and I bet it will be even better in the spring. It's also close enough that I was able to walk home in about 15 minutes, stopping at a Boulangerie-Patisserie on the way home for a snack!