Geocaching in Montmartre Cemetery

A few months ago Quentin (my nephew) and I were geocaching and we found a great cache with a few Travel Bugs in it.  (Geocaching is when you get the GPS coordinates of a secret container someone has hidden and - using a GPS - you track down the location and the cache container.  It usually contains a log book for you to sign as well as the occasional trinket.)  Travel Bugs look like little metal army tags but they have ID numbers on them; the point is to go to the geocache website and log that you found a Travel Bug and the location / cache where you found it.  It is then your job to take the Travel Bug and drop it off in another cache for someone else to find.  On the geocache website you can follow the journey of the Travel Bug as it moves from location to location.

When I decided to come to Paris I knew that I had to bring one of the Travel Bugs and deposit it in a Paris cache.  Luckily, there was a great one right down the street from the Montmartre apartment in the Cimetiere de Montmartre, or Montmartre Cemetery.  Unfortunately, just days before my arrival the geocache was temporarily de-activated by the owner because the container and log was missing :-(  I decided to go ahead and leave the Travel Bug hidden in the place the cache container should have been, then I went to the geocache website to log what I had done and to encourage the owner to keep the cache going.  Here are a few picture of the journey and the cemetery:

View of Montmartre Cemetery 

The site of the geocache:  Dalida's grave.  Dalida was an Egyptian-born daughter of Italian parents who lived most of her adult life in France.  She was a well-known international singer that recorded in several languages and had a strong following, even to this day.  She lived a tragic life and committed suicide in 1987 at the age of 53.

The cache is normally hidden under the hedge

Her grave is quite striking and the statue of her is beautiful

This is what my Travel Bug looked like - it originated in Anaheim, CA and I added the keychain of the Space Needle to represent Seattle

The Travel Bug in its hiding place

I took this photograph of an owl on one of the crypts and it is now my avatar on the geocache website, perfect for my user name:  FeatherWitch

The cemetery was very interesting, especially when you realize that some of the graves are dated from the 1700s while others are dated as recently as a few months ago, with freshly engraved markers and semi-wilted flowers.  I was particularly taken with the many swallows flying around the cemetery grounds, they were so quick and agile they appeared to be bats or even insects.  They swoop through the air catching insects (go swallows!) and went swooshing by at a very close distance but never coming close enough to collide with you.  At times you could feel the rush of wind from their wings as then swooped by only inches away.  It was a thrill for me - a bird lover - and an added bonus to the geocache and cemetery visit.

A few photos of the statuary located in the cemetery