Paris: Cimitiere de Montmartre

I've always been fascinated by cemeteries, ever since my grand-dad started taking me to view the graves of dearly-departed relatives in central Texas back in the 70s. I used to wander through aisle after aisle, reading inscriptions and being morbidly interested in the stones of children and other people who left the earth too soon; I wondered how they might have died. Perhaps this was an odd thing for an (over)imaginative girl-child to do, but in the scorching heat of small-town-summer Texas, it was a good way to pass the time. Even at that age, I keenly observed the designs of the various headstones, and until my grandparents insisted that we leave and head for a coffee and ice cream break, I would search for the oldest and most weather-worn. 

So you can imagine that I simply had to visit Cimitiere de Montmartre, especially since we stayed right across the street from it. There are quite a few famous people buried there, such as Truffaut, Berlioz, Degas, Delibes, Stendahl, Nijinsky, and Récamier, and we did spot some of their graves. But true to my old ways, I preferred just wandering and observing.