Merci Paris...

Our last day. This is it, walk 'til you drop, day. And trust me by the end of today we were going to drop.

Before we went to the metro, we stopped here for some chocolate croissants. We had been in this pastry shop a few times this week. My sister's name was in the shops name, so we knew everything they sold would be délicieux.

Our stomachs satisfied we headed to our metro stop. If I haven't mentioned it, our stop was "Cambronne". It was above ground but did make it's way underground eventually.

First stop of the day. Sainte-Chapelle. Sainte-Chapelle was founded by the ultra-devout King Louis IX of France, who constructed it as a chapel for the royal palace and to house precious relics. The palace itself has otherwise utterly disappeared, leaving the Sainte-Chapelle all but surrounded by the Palais de Justice.

The building itself was not all that huge. After paying the admission fee, they offered guided tours in a variety of languages. We took advantage of this and got a good overview of the chapel. It contained some of the most beautiful stained glass windows I have ever seen.

Next stop? Notre Dame, which was right around the corner.

Just a side note here. A lot of the places we saw on this trip were under renovation, Kensington Palace, the Pantheon and Sainte-Chapelle had scaffolding on the buildings, both inside and out. Notre Dame was no different.

There was no admission fee, it reminded me a lot of St. Patricks Cathedral in NYC. Being Sunday, there was a service going on. Silence was in order and people wandered around the perimeter of church taking in the architecture, stained glass windows and statues. Photos were allowed in here.

After leaving there we continued walking and stopped for a snack. Our own freshly-made Nutella crepe.

We made our way to the Centre Georges Pompidou. It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research.  It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building.

The architecture of the building is the big draw. It is one of the more modern buildings in Paris.

Centre Georges Pompidou

We hopped on the metro to our next stop, the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Yes, cemetery. We went here at the suggestion of a friend (thanks Suzy!). One could spend hours here exploring the crypts and headstones. And in the end, we were here for hours.

A number of famous people are buried here, among them Jim Morrison of the Doors.  So being Americans our mission was to find his resting place.

My research indicated that you could purchase a map of the cemetery from a street vendor or view the directory at the entrance of the cemetery. It was recommended that one print out a map beforehand, which is what I did.

So Lauren checked the directory for Jim Morrison’s plot, section 30, plot 6. I referred to my printed map for section 30, plot 6 and off we went.

It was a bit of an uphill hike to that area, we took our time, wandering in and out of the tombs. We wandered up and down the roads in the cemetery…many times. We met up with 2 girls who were also searching for Jim Morrison’s plot. We joined forces to find it. We looked. We referred to the map. We wandered. We got swarmed by bugs. Lauren was afraid she was going to get "a French foreign bug disease". We walked the same paths over and over and over and over.

We. Could. Not. Find. It.

Which was odd to me. I thought there would be some sort of crowd or flowers or sign because he was a pretty famous musician.

I was ready to give up. Our 2 other cohorts had had enough and we parted ways. It just wasn’t that important at this point. But Lauren, who didn’t even know who Jim Morrison was, was determined to find this. So we kept searching and searching and searching.

Finally Lauren relented. We admitted defeat. If we were in the Amazing Race, we would have been eliminated from the race.

Before we left the cemetery Lauren wanted to check the directory one more time. She was irked. I hear her go “Ohhh, I read it wrong, its section 6, plot 30. It’s right over here…let’s go.”

And off we went. And it was right there. Fenced off. With a crowd. And flowers. And a Jack Daniels bottle.  Ta-dah!

Exhausted was how I could describe us at this point. There was one more thing on our agenda though for the day, Sacre-Coeur. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacre-Coeur Basilica, is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It opened in 1914. 

So back onto the metro we went. We got out of the subway station and looked up. There was a lovely hill with all sorts of souvenir shops and questionable people trying to hawk there wares. 

Did I mention we were exhausted at this point or rather our feet were. We trudged up the hill. At the top of the hill we again looked up. There were about 200 more stairs to enter the Basilica (at least they were not spiral stairs!). We just kind of looked at each other wondering how we were going to do this. 

Fortunately we found this. A "funicular".

And it took us right to the top.

Sacre-Coeur

We went inside, there was no admission fee. There was organ music playing. We sat and took a few moments to enjoy the beauty of the church, enjoy the music and reflect. We were also being amused by all the people being reprimanded for taking photos inside. No photos were allowed in here and it was clearly stated in numerous languages. 

We sat for a while because, quite frankly, our feet were at their breaking point. I walk, and I walk a lot at home, but this trip really did a number on our feet. Somehow we managed our way back to the metro.

When we got back to our hotel we had dinner again at the Café Cambronne (it was so good the first time!). We were greeted by the same waitress. The meal was once again delicious. It was the perfect way to end our trip.

We went back to the hotel to pack.  I was apprehensive when we first arrived in Paris, but I have fallen in love with it. Merci Paris. I was sad to leave but tomorrow we will be home in America!