Our first day officially in Paris was spent first at a delicious brunch at la Bellevilloise in the 20th arrondissement where we helped ourselves to fantastic coffee and a ridiculous assortment of savory french salads and wraps and the classic options of sweet crêpes and pastries. We then rolled our way over to the cemetery of Père Lachaise, where such celebrities as Jim Morrison, Napoleon, and Delacroix are buried. Turned out the tour we signed up for was three hours long and consisted of about 60 people, all of whom (besides the couple of SLU doppelgängers we saw) were big on calling us out for being young and American and even asked us where our teacher was (?!?!) so we decided to call it quits about halfway through and explore by ourselves.
The graves we did visit with "Thierry le Roi" were pretty cool though. They included the grave of Victor Noir, a 22 year old journalist killed by Napoleon III's cousin for publishing anti-napoleonic articles. The sculpture took a few artistic/ political liberties, chief among which was a symbolic endowment of the figure with the fertility of ' liberty of the press which the generations have not failed to appreciate.I also left my sunday metro pass on Proust's grave per tradition and tried to find Jim Morrison's grave, but no luck. Instead we preempted the 'end of the night' with a drink down the street and began our Paris adventure.
The cemetery is built on a hill though, so it offered a couple of views of the Eiffel Tour to get us excited for our tour today!
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