Here's my bus map again. We were staying the in the 7th Arrondissement near the Champ de Mars. The cemetery is in the 20th Arrondissment near Gambetta. They are catty-cornered across the map from each other. In case you didn't know, Paris is divided into 20 municipal districts called "arrondissements." They start in the center of the city and spiral out, so small numbers are in the older parts of the city and large ones are in the newer, at least by Parisian and European standards.
The #69 bus route is a famous tourist one not only because it's pickpocket heaven but also because it passes by a number of main attractions and takes you from the Eiffel Tower (near our hotel) to Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. You may be able to follow it a little better on this section of the bus map. Read the Wikipedia article linked for more detail on the cemetery and the reasons for its location outside the city, at least at the time of its founding in 1804.
It took a long time to get there and of course we got our usual late start, but we got to see a lot along the way.Pere-Lachaise Cemetery is significant because so many famous people are buried there. More fun than the Wikipedia article linked above is the virtual tour. If you go there, you can find the graves of many of the famous, click on their flashing crosses and see pictures of their tombs. The easiest way to do that is to scan the alphabetical list. A more serendipitous way is to just mouse over the crosses. The name of the person buried there will appear. Then you can click on the cross and see the tomb.
Probably one of the surprises to many Americans who go to Europe (and other places) is that the cemeteries tend to be chock-a-block with graves and tombs. Land is at such a premium that no cemetery we saw anywhere, except perhaps in Iceland, had much space around any of the graves.
This is what it looked like walking in. The Wikipedia pictures are good, but too nicely photographed to give a realistic view of the crowding in Pere-Lachaise.
Our one goal was to find Jim Morrison's grave. Armed with a map, we finally did. Once again I wished we'd had more time because I would like to have visited the graves of some other people as well. Maybe next time. As you can see, his grave is very modest and crowded in among a bunch of other much more impressive tombs. It's very popular, though. Even in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, there were people looking for it like us and standing there when we found it.
Many ignorant people think that the inscription on it, KATA TON DAIMONA EAYTOY, has some evil meaning. It really means, True to His Own Spirit, but perhaps Jim would enjoy people thinking that he's a demon. He's always been one of my spirited favorites.
After finding it, we realized that the instructions we had for getting to Pere-Lachaise routed us around to an entrance that was almost as far away from his grave as it could be, at the top of the interactive map. Our bus actually passed by the main entrance which was very close to it, at the bottom of the interactive map.Before we left the cemetery, we both used the public restrooms. That was a big mistake. However, it put us on a street where we saw this in the window of some cemetery-related business. Of course, Trout had to go in.
There was one woman working there. I don't think she was the owner of the car. I don't think the owner was there because I'm sure s/he he would've come out and talked to us about it.
We decided to take the Metro back to Notre-Dame. We got on at one of the frequently photographed Art Nouveau entrances.
Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris is known round the world and is one of the most famous buildings anywhere. My link goes to the official website which has way more information and better pictures than I could ever provide here. Be sure to click on the building history. As with so many other Christian churches, it was built on the site of a Roman temple. The current building was started in the 12th century and is Gothic in style. 
One of the first things we saw when we went inside was the colors of the stained glass on the wall of the nave.
This choir wall, built to shelter the choir and the priests during the Middle Ages, was my favorite thing in the church. It's like a large 3D wooden storyboard telling the story of Jesus from birth to resurrection.
Of course, the stained glass, painting and sculpture in the side chapels is also quite impressive.
Remember that this church is devoted to the Virgin Mary, so there are many depictions of her with the Christ child.
This altar piece is very similar to the Pieta in Rome.
Did I say the stained glass is one of the special things about Notre-Dame?
After Notre-Dame it was time to go to the Louvre. We got on the Metro again and got off in the basement shopping area connected with the museum. It is so huge that we got a little mis/disoriented. We had lunch in the underground, found our way in (finally) and headed for the Mona Lisa. We were there at a good time. The Mona Lisa wasn't mobbed and the rest of the museum was tolerable.
There was one woman working there. I don't think she was the owner of the car. I don't think the owner was there because I'm sure s/he he would've come out and talked to us about it.
We decided to take the Metro back to Notre-Dame. We got on at one of the frequently photographed Art Nouveau entrances.
Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris is known round the world and is one of the most famous buildings anywhere. My link goes to the official website which has way more information and better pictures than I could ever provide here. Be sure to click on the building history. As with so many other Christian churches, it was built on the site of a Roman temple. The current building was started in the 12th century and is Gothic in style. This is really the only place on the trip where Trout was approached by thieves in the guise of beggars. At first he would say "Da!", pretending to be Russian until I told him that meant yes, so he switched to "Nyet!" Either seemed to work, though.
One of the first things we saw when we went inside was the colors of the stained glass on the wall of the nave.
This choir wall, built to shelter the choir and the priests during the Middle Ages, was my favorite thing in the church. It's like a large 3D wooden storyboard telling the story of Jesus from birth to resurrection.
Of course, the stained glass, painting and sculpture in the side chapels is also quite impressive.
Remember that this church is devoted to the Virgin Mary, so there are many depictions of her with the Christ child.
This altar piece is very similar to the Pieta in Rome.
Did I say the stained glass is one of the special things about Notre-Dame?
After Notre-Dame it was time to go to the Louvre. We got on the Metro again and got off in the basement shopping area connected with the museum. It is so huge that we got a little mis/disoriented. We had lunch in the underground, found our way in (finally) and headed for the Mona Lisa. We were there at a good time. The Mona Lisa wasn't mobbed and the rest of the museum was tolerable.You can visit some selected works from the museum online going to the overview of the collection and clicking on the kind of work you want to see. Since we headed straight for the Mona Lisa, we spent quite a bit of time looking at Italian Renaissance painting. I'm particularly fond of Northern Renaissance work as well, so we also looked at Flemish and Dutch painting.
My other must see here was to stroll through the antiquities collections from Eqypt and the Near East.
As with the other major museums we went to, Trout was somewhat overwhelmed at the size of the Louvre. You can get visual overload which makes you just as tired as the walking around.
Before getting back on the Metro for home, we stopped at a Starbucks in the Carrousel de Louvre, the underground shopping mall. It was just a little piece of home with a French twist.
When we tried to buy tickets for the Metro to head back, the ticket office was closed. There was a guy there selling tickets, but everything I read said that people would try to sell you used tickets and then disappear when you tried to use them. Fortunately, I had saved back 2 tickets from the carnet I got when we arrived, so we had those to use.
We got back to our room early enough that we decided to do our laundry before going to dinner. There was a great place right in the neighborhood and we managed to get everything dry before it closed at 9:00 p.m. It was run by a Spanish family and the abuelo came in around 8:30 to clean up before closing. The rest of the family arrived about 20 minutes later. Naturally, we were their last customers and they were surprised when I spoke to them in Spanish.
For our final dinner in Paris, we went to another neighborhood place, La Terrasse du 7eme. We passed it constantly walking around the neighborhood, it was open late and it was great. They didn't make us rush and we didn't need to because our train for the chunnel to England didn't leave until about noon the next day.
I was surprised at how much I liked Paris and how much I felt at home there. My whole life, no matter where I visit, I speculate on whether or not I could live there. Now that my time for living anywhere is greatly limited, I wonder if I would enjoy going back for an extended period of time. I could easily see us renting a small apartment in Paris for a few weeks until we were ready to move on.
At our hotel we met a couple from Ballard, a Scandinavian neighborhood in Seattle. She was retired, but he was still working, so they only had 3 weeks for vacation. They flew to Paris, rented a car and for 2 of the 3 weeks, drove all over France with no particular itinerary or reservations, stopping in places that looked good. They returned their car to the airport and took public transportation into the city for the last week of their trip. I thought this was a great idea for our next visit to Spain or France or Ireland or Scotland or England or Iceland or Italy or... or... or...
