A WALK AMONG THE DEAD

Visiting cemeteries is not something that I do very often.

Oh, I know that these places are often very interesting with all the old gravestones.

Actually I much prefer the pretty little graveyards so often found surrounding old English churches.

Huge acreages packed with tombs stretching as far as you can see seem like a terrible waste of space to me and they are usually situated on prime real estate.

However this was the famous Pere Lachaire cemetery of Paris so yesterday we set off to see it.

We are visiting some of the outer areas of Paris this trip and are really enjoying this peek into the lives of real Parisians.

The cemetery is absolutely packed with graves and monuments that look like old fashioned phone boxes !

Throughout there are large Horse Chestnut trees which are very pretty and some are absolutely huge.

Everything is neat and tidy.

Some graves have little gardens where flowers are in bloom and some have pretty fresh flowers.

There are well marked roads crisscrossing the entire cemetery and you need to buy a map if you are looking for something in particular.

There are many famous people buried here as well as ordinary families.

One of the graves we were looking for was the grave of James Morrison.

Here it is attracting quite a few other people. It is not as it was originally due to vandalism.

What remains is fenced off a little way from people loving it to death.

Next we set off up to the top of the hill to find Oscar Wilde's grave....

and here it is !

A very strange headstone I thought.

Can you see the red sploggy marks on the end? 

Here's a closer view.

Yes, they're lip marks ! People have been kissing the stone !

Yuck !

Previously it was so bad and caused such damage to the stone removing it, that a glass cage now protects the lower parts.

( photo from the internet)

Aren't people weird ?

The last grave we sought out was the grave of the legendary lovers Abelard and Heloise.

You can read their amazing story here :

www.abelardandheloise.com/Story.html 

This is their tomb. They were removed from their original separate graves and placed here together.

Reunited in their tomb after spending most of their lives apart.

One of the great love stories .

And so our fantastic holiday comes to an end.

In a few hours we head off to Charles De Gaulle airport for the 24 hour flight home.

On the way we lose a day, departing here on 31st May and arriving home on 2nd June.

It is Winter time back home but the forecast temperature is 26 degrees on Monday -warmer than anything we have had since we came over to Europe ! 

Au revoir mes amis.

A bientot !