Paris, Je T'Aime

And now, for the exciting conclusion to "A Weekend in Paris."

Sunday we woke up and got ready to go back into the city. We were all a little worse for the wear from the busy two days we had combined with the lack of sleep which had accumulated over the past few days.

Once we arrived in the city, we started out at Pere Lachaise, which is an old cemetery in Paris, which is also huge. It is absolutely beautiful and it was neat just to walk through cemetery looking at the old tombs. There are a number of famous people buried here, including Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf (one of the most famous French singers ever who they recently made a movie about - "La Vie en Rose"), Moliere, and Jim Morrison. This is also the site of the infamous Paris Commune, where hundreds of people were shot by the French government, who was trying to take back control over Paris, which had been run by the people of Paris for over two months. (It's an interesting story if you want to look it up for yourself.) Anyways, we walked around the cemetery and looked at some of the famous graves. We found out later that Chopin is also buried there and I was pretty disappointed that we had missed that, but overall it was great.

After Pere Lachaise, we made our way over to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. Montmartre is the highest point in Paris and was once the artist quarter and Sacre Coeur is a church at the top of Montmartre. We wandered around the area and ate lunch. Some of the group decided to go for a sit down lunch, but the food in the area was really over priced, so some of us just went and got some sandwiches and ate on the street, which was just as good or better I think.

Once we finished lunch, we had to head over to the train station and return back to Brussels. We were all so tired, every single one of us took a nap on the train and I felt much better after that. Once we got back to Brussels we discovered a festival going on right on our street, Chaussee d'Ixelles. I would have loved to check out the festival more in depth, but I was ready to be home. Paris was wonderful, but it was great to be back in familiar territory and to be able to sit down and relax.

And that concludes my weekend adventures in Paris. Tune in next week for the details of my weekend adventure to Dublin.

Love to all,
Courtney