Friday, May 18, 2012

Looking for a Sunday Croissant and Edith Piaf

Before meeting his friends on Saturday night, Jeremy asked me "when do you want to meet tomorrow and what do you want to do"? I said, "don't rush to get here and I have NO AGENDA". What a great thing to sleep in a little bit, and let Paris come to me! So on Sunday around 1030am, Jeremy and I decided to look for a boulangerie for a breakfast bakery item and a coffee... wow was that difficult. Most everything was closed on Sunday around my hotel, so we decided to head off to the cemetery Pere Lachaise Cemetery hoping to find some to eat along the way.
Today there are over 1 million bodies buried above-ground there, and many more in an area reserved for those who requested to be cremated. Some of the more famous people buried in Pere Lachaise include: Balzac (French Novelist), Georges Bizet (French Composer), Frederic Chopin (Composer), Moliere (Play write), Jim Morrison (American Singer/Songwriter), Edith Piaf (France's most famous singer), Camille Pissarro (Impressionist Painter), Gertrude Stein (American Writer), George Seurat (Post Impressionist), and Oscar Wilde (Irish Writer).
All of the burial sites were above ground, from small tombs to buildings the size of a small cathedral replete with stained-glass and religious monuments. As we purely happened upon one grave circa 1871, a Parisian told us of the story of the man buried where we stood (Victor Noir). Seeing that he was speaking in French, I missed quite a chunk of the translation, but knew a bit about the story of the man's death death by a pistol shot from a Prince of the Emperor, and the story behind his grave. It is said that if a woman rubs the bronze grave and places a flower in his top hat, she will be guaranteed a husband within a year. Quite the story... and one that many women appear to believe!
Unfortunately, Jeremy and I did not have a map nor any idea of where to find ANY of the famous people listed in the first paragraph of this post. After walking around for several hours, and marveling at many of the structures, we decided to head out of the cemetery.

1 comment:

  1. It's cool to see the place where so many famous people are buried. Gertrude Stein was the writer portrayed by Kathy Bates in Midnight in Paris, oui?

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