Wednesday 24 April 2013

Tuesday 23rd. April. Paris
















































You would need about eight weeks in Paris to do it justice, so we only had a small taste of it today. I wanted to see Jim Morrisons grave at the Pere - La Chaise Cemetry, so that was our first port of call. We were wandering around the cemetry, trying to find it when a self-appointed guide walked up and said "are you looking for Jim Morrisons grave?" I said yes, so he said "Follow me", and took us straight to it. After that he showed us all the interesting graves: Frederic Chopin, Edith Piaf, Jean-Baptiste Molliere, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, the Rothschild family, Bellini, Bizet, Maria Callas, Marcelle Marceau (who died in Australia), Yves Montand, Modigliani, the Bugatti family, the Peugeot family, and Joseph Spiess who was involved in the development of the Zeppelin airship.  It seems incredible that so many famous people would be buried in the same cemetry, but as our guide (Raphael) explained, the cost of a grave site is offered free to famous people, but is exhorbitantly expensive to anyone else.  The Rothschild family crypt is said to have cost hundreds of thousands of euros, but Jim Morrison's was free.

After that we went back to the Seine and took a guided boat cruise to see all the sights from the river.  Then we walked to the Eiffel Tower, and walked back through the city along the Boulevard St Germaine.  We saw the bar/restaurant "Les Deux Magots" which used to be frequented by famed artists and writers, including Picasso, Hemmingway, Sartre and de Beauvoir.  It was too crowded for us to have a drink there though.

We caught the express train back to Orleans that night, exhausted but happy.

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