October 15, 2013

We were flying out of Paris, so we spent the afternoon of our last day in Europe being tourists. Our first stop was to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. The Père Lachaise is not only beautiful, but the resting place of a number of famous people including Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison of The Doors.

Jim Morrison’s grave

Grave of Oscar Wilde

It was fascinating walking through the cobblestone paths lined with mausoleums and above ground graves. The placement of graves seemed to be completely random. Graves from the early 1700s were right next to a graves from the 2000s.

Above ground graves

Mausoleums

I think a person could spend all day at the cemetery, but we had limited time. Next we headed to the Eiffel Tower. Our route took us by the Louvre and L’Arc de Triomphe. We might have stopped to look around, but there was a massive traffic jam that took awhile to get through.

A little traffic around the Arc de Triomphe

We opted to battle the traffic to find parking near the Eiffel Tower. We walked around for a bit and even got a few photos without anybody else but us and the Eiffel Tower.

Eiffel Tower

The required kissing photo

Finally, it was time to return the rental car and go to the airport. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. Chandler was able to convince the ticket agent that we did in fact get 2 free bags and would not need to pay for extra baggage. Our flight to Mexico was overnight but on an airplane so old, there were still ashtrays in the armrests. I thought the plane might come apart a few times during the flight. It was “fun”!