We went to the graveyard to visit some old dead people! The Cemetiere du Pere Lachaise hosts such famous guests as Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Frederic Chopin, Sarah Bernhardt, Marcel Proust, and Jim Morrison.
The cemetery is open daily and is best reached by the Pere Lachaise stop off the metro. We happened to have a beautiful fall day and we were far from being the only visitors - though it seemed may were there to see actual family - and had I know (!!) I would have visited MY family there. Apparently the Roman's (my step-dad's mother's family) has a plot. Wish I had known before we went!
Ryan making house calls.
We wound our way through the graves - often leaving the paved paths and foraging right through the thick of it to peak in mausoleums and looks for ghosties.
Couldn't go in all of them but they looked pretty from what I could see.
Ryan really used this as a "portfolio" building opportunity and jumped into as many pictures as I was willing to take :)
I really thought Jim would have a more impressive gig going on here.
No ghosts to report but many harbingers of death stalking the graves.
Ryan is a friend of all animals. Even harbingers.
Caught.
We could have taken this a smidge more seriously...
The highlight of the trip was Oscar Wilde's tomb.
The hundreds of kisses on Wilde's tomb threaten to permanently deface Wilde's resting place. I read an artical that said that scratches could be sanded down, pen marks could be washed off, but lipstick - because of the animal fat in it - bonds with the stone and can't really be cleaned off.
Also I read that the statue has been castrated several times. The first time it was castrated by the groundkeeper who found the size of the member to be offensive...he used the testicles as a paperweight. It was restored at some point and then re-castrated by some hoodlums in the 60's. Poor angle.
Happy Halloween!
2 comments:
Jim Morrison did have a bust on his tomb, but vandals kept taking chunks of it off. Morrison's tomb had many people and vandals come to his grave, the cemetery consider removing him from the graveyard. Which some think that is a fitting story for a singer known for being kicked out of places.
Very cool!!
I would have left a kiss on Chopin's tomb.
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