Call me morbid, but I love old cemeteries.  They’re so peaceful, so spiritual, so, well, otherworldly.  I can spend hours looking at  tombstones and reading the inscriptions, thinking about how the people lived. 

My all-time favorite cemetery is the one I came across unexpectedly at Montmajour Abbey, a huge medieval monastery outside of Arles in France.  There aren’t any bodies there now – they were removed long ago.  When I first saw the large holes cut into the rocky outcrop outside the abbey, I didn’t know what they were.  Then I realized the holes were vaguely human-shaped, with angular cuts for the shoulders and head.  My thoughts went something like this:

“Oh my God, those are tombs cut into the rock.”

“Wow, they are hundreds of years old.”

“It’s strange that there’s nothing covering them.”

“Since there’s nothing covering them, I should probably get inside one right now!”

And that’s…