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Autumn Colours Père Lachaise
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In July 2011, looking at the days papers reports on the fortieth anniversary of Jim Morrison's death I decided to realise one of my teenage dreams and visit Paris, the Cemetery of Père Lachaise, and my former idols Grave. Me being me I decided that the only way to do this would be to fly Edinburgh to Beauvais, then catch a train to Brussels then bus to Amsterdam quite why I decided to do this in four days is really beyond even me other than I thought it would be a fum, which to be honest it was, but I would recommend that anyone thinking about doing a similar trip leave at least eight day to complete this adventurous type of trip even if you have visited all three cities extensively in the past. A further recommendation would be that unless they're are substantial discounts for travelling to an airport other than Charles De Gaulle then go directly to Paris CDG. Anyway after an extended Journey to Paris due to landing at Beauvais, I spent a fitful first night at the Formulae 1 Montmatre
http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-2539-formule-1-hotelf1-paris-porte-de-montmartre/index.shtml, this was mainly due to being over- tired , over- hungry and nothing to do with the hotel in question. The hotel itself was pretty much what it said on the the tin, the hotel was basic, cheap place to spend the night being such it was a bit out of the city , the area it was in was a bit dodgy but I was planning on doing a lot of site seeing in my two full days in Paris (if you continue to read you will see that I did), therefore hotel was fine and did nothing to warrant the horrendous reviews I have seen of the place on sites such as trip advisor. Anyway I had the dodgy nights sleep and woke up , still quiet tired, but fuelled by the simple but filling breakfast on offer and three massive cups of coffee I was ready to hit Paris, incidentally the breakfast cost under 4 euros and you could have as much coffee as you could drink, a bargain in this notoriously expensive city.
After a relatively painless metro journey I arrived at the very pretty Père Lachaise Cemetery and spent the first hour or so enjoying the surrounds I found the Monument below:
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| Oscar Wildes Grave |
And was glad that the teenage dream I was realising was not to visit Oscar Wilde's Grave , for those that cannot read French it essentially says " The Monument of Oscar Wilde, is undertaking restoration work during October and November 2011. Thank you for not approaching and respecting the building works". For those that speak better French than me I apologise for my bad translation!! After this I left the Cemetery for a refreshment break and found some lovely floral displays just outside the Cemetery. I'm sure that the Florists would have preferred I buy the flowers than take photo's of them, but never mind!
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| Flowers Outside Père Lachaise |
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| Trees in Père Lachaise |
After rejoining the Cemetery I spent another hour so meandering through the cemetery's tree lined avenue before deciding that it really was time to fulfil what I had came here to do.
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| A Junction in le Cimetière |
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| Graves on a Hill |
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| Another Junction |
Up to this point I had been quite happy just meandering along hoping I would chance upon the correct grave but now felt it was time to move on and start exploring the city a bit more. The grave was quite difficult to find as it wasn't on the main drag as it were, however I did finally find it and was able to cross , see Jim Morrison's Grave off my list. I was quite frustrated that the grave was even forty years and four months after Morrison's death his grave was still surrounded by tourist's but I suppose what more can you expect of the most famous grave in the most famous cemetery in the world ?
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