Cimetière du Père Lachaise

This is the largest cemetery in Paris--I think the guide said over 7 million people are buried here--and it doesn't look like any cemetery I've ever seen before. You cannot imagine what a jumbled-up mess of tombs it is. The graves are all different sizes, from small, flat granite stones, to enormous, elaborate gothic crypts. There's a huge crematorium with rows and rows of ashes stacked one upon another. Even in the tombs, families will have the ashes or bodies stacked to save the cost of buying aother plot. People bring ashes to scatter in the grassy parts here and you can see all this grey dust. Many famous people are buried here--Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Richard Wright, Chopin, Rossini.

The three most visited crypts are Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and a fellow named Victor Noir. Victor was shot because he spoke out against Napoleon, there was public outrage, and the bronze figure on his grave was created in his honor. This tomb is one of the most popular because there's a legend that if you rub his crotch, it will bless you with fertility. According to my tour guide, if you touch his toe, you'll have one baby; if you touch both toes, two. Fertility is not a blessing I have use for right now but the guide REFUSED to let me leave without rubbing the crotch and touching his toes. So if I'm magically, improbably pregnant in a few months, here's the reason.

So this guide, he just comes up to me as I'm looking at my map and tells me a shortcut to get to the Chopin grave. So I take his advice, and I run into him like 10 minutes later and he asks me if I've seen Marcel Marceau's spot. I'm like, ''No,'' because I know he's a famous name in France, but I care about mimes. Nobody does. Except the French, of course. But this guy is insistent that I have to see it, ''shortcut, shortcut'' is what he says. He's all about shortcuts. Basically, he ends up being my personal tour guide, showing me all the important graves, and giving me lots of cool stories. He never mentioned a fee, though I knew that I'd probably get the hard sell at the end, but I actually really valued his (22 years of) experience because this place is enormous and crazy and impossible to navigate, even with a map. I never would have gotten to all the graves I wanted to see, or learned the little factoids. Some highlights:

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were lovers, and allowed to be buried in the same plot. One side of the grave has Gertrude's name; the other Alice's.

Edith Piaf

Okay, out of respect for my tour guide, I took a pic of Marcel Marceau's grave. The interesting thing he told me, was that the French don't ever visit their family graves. They'll do it once a year, on Nov. 1, All Saint's Day, but they'll bring plastic flowers so they don't have to come back for another year. Jewish people don't bring flowers; out of respect they place rocks on the tombs. So this grave, and Gertrude Stein's above, has lots of rocks and pebbles.

There were several memorials in the cemetery, to each of the WWII concentration camps, to those killed in airline crashes. This was the Auschwitz memorial:

Before I got to Oscar Wilde's grave my guide insisted that I put on lipstick and I was like, ''I don't even have lipstick in my bag'' and he looked so disappointed in me. When we got to the tomb, I saw why. It's another custom to kiss Oscar Wilde's grave and leave a lipstick print. So I dug out some lip gloss and let him take my photos. It's disgusting; but since I still have this shitty cold, I figured that I'm probably more germy than the tomb. There are lipstick prints all over the tomb. Someone hacked off the rock genitals of the stone figure on the grave, for good luck? There are some seriously crazy, superstitious people out there. After dark, police dogs guard the three most famous tombs to keep people from violating them. And speaking of violating, they could use some police in other parts of the cemetery to keep an eye out for people like the guy I saw ''violating himself ''on one of the graves. Yeah. (Andrew, I'm so sorry you had to read that. :) The ashes of one of Oscar Wilde's lovers is also buried in the tomb, but they were not allowed to put the man's name on the tomb, because it was taboo at that time.

Jim Morrison's tomb, which is a lot cleaner than the last time I visted. Last time, there was graffiti on the tombs surrounding it, candle wax everywhere, and hippies lounging about. Supposedly, they have a guard watching this one all the time, but I didn't see any guards, and there weren't even many people visiting the site.

Not sure whose this is, but I thought it was pretty.

It was interesting that many of the most rich and famous people had the most understated graves. There were a few huge, majorly expensive graves the size of a house, but names I didn't recognize. Many of the older tombs looked like a little outhouse, with a small sculpture of a saint inside, and a little stained glass window. Many had the doors rusted off and were totally in disrepair. The guide said that they're tearing down the older ones all the time because families can't keep up with the cost of maintaining the plots, which is thousands of Euros each year for even a very small plot.

My crazy guide, who actually did shake me down at the end, though it was well worth it for the time it saved me wandering around with a map. Our conversation went like this:

''You know, I am usually paid for this. I do tours here for groups, usually.''

''I'm sure you do, thank you for showing me around,'' handing him 5 Euros, which actually isn't much for the work he did.

''People like me more than that.''

I laugh and hand him another 5.

''You like me 20?''

''No.''