L'exploration de Montmartre

Today began with morning jaunt about the neighborhood. One of the fabulous things about living close to the "jewish district" is that many things are open on Sunday so long as you know where to go. After picking up my baguette at Biatrix, I took a stroll down one of these streets with many open-les-dimanches markets and took note.

A baguette and some cheese in hand, I meandered my way to the subway in hopes of beginning today's scheduled tour of Montmartre a little bit early by myself. The last time I went to Montmartre, I had gotten off at "Anvers," but my tour was scheduled to start just outside of "Lamarck-Caulaincourt" so I decided to explore that area more.

Once I arrived, I realized that this metro, while being a slightly less direct route to Sacre Coeur, was a better metro stop for Montmartre because it began already some ways up the hill. That's right, you can walk down to Sacre Coeur.

Walking around the area just about the Metro stop, I noticed some stores I wanted to visit once they reopened, as well as some beautiful homes, streets, and scenery. Montmartre is probably as close to a "village" as I've seen in Paris yet and everything really reflects that village "charm." After picnic-ing on a park bench and then returning to the metro stop, I finally met up with my group and ascended the steps to the street "villa leandre" where we caught a glimpse of what an older Montmartre might have looked like. Our guide, Natalie, informed us that Monmartre is relatively new to Paris, and prior to its inclusion, Montmartre was a little village filled with potagers and abbeys. Villa Leandre is one of the only streets left in Paris (and Montmartre) with stone laden streets and almost every building is a house (as opposed to an apartment).

At the end of the street, there is a dead end and some stairs that lead to a park on the way to the Place Dalida. The park features a statue of Saint Denis, carrying his head as legend said he did on the day of his execution all throughout Montmartre. Some say that the "martre" part of "montmartre" comes from the word "martyr."


When we exited the park, we stood on the place dalida, facing the famous bust of the beautiful singer. Continuing up (and then down) the rue de saules, you can see some of Montmartre's old agricultural history: vineyards. The abbeys sold a lot of land to people who were looking to take advantage of Monmartre's unique taxing situation: since Montmartre was virtually in Paris, but technically not subject to Paris' tax on wine, the wine business in Montmartre was very lucrative. It was so much cheaper to drink in Montmartre that many Parisians frequented the taverns in Montmartre every time they wanted to drink which, as we all know, lead to the creation of many cabarets and Montmartre's reputation as a district of illicit pleasures.

In fact, at the end this vineyard on rue de saules, one can see the only remaining Caberet in Paris: "Au Lapin Agile." Unlike many other cabarets that have since been converted into restaurants and cafés, Au Lapin Agile still maintains its regular program.

We continued our journey seeing all of Montmartre's "musts" at the "butte" (at the top of and alongside the hill that is Montmartre): the museum of Montmartre, the moulin de la galette, the old city center, the Dali museum, l'Eglise Saint Pièrre, Sacre Coeur, la bateau-lavoir, etc...



When we began to descend, we passed the théâtre de la ville, the rue des martyrs, and the deux moulins (from Amélie). At the end, we ended up at the Moulin Rouge, which in the bright daylight looks unfortunately far less glamorous and bohemian that it does in my dreams. It's even wedged in between a "Quick" (France's Mc Donalds) and a modern 3-story nightclub. If you continue your way down the street, you'll happen by the erotica museum (this used to be a red-light district, after all).


I returned home to a glass of red and a pasta with pork, corn, and basil tomato sauce. Mhmm delicious Paris.







Total damages:
Baguette: ,85 EUR

An afternoon at la Tour Eiffel et l'école militaire

Woke up at noon and got going around 2. Taylor and I headed over to the local boulangerie for a fresh baguette with the intention of heading over the Tour Eiffel for a picnic with 2 other friends. Except when we walked over to the local fromagère, we noticed that he, like many other stores in Paris, was closed on Sunday. We thought that the Monoprix would be open, so we walked down there, but it was closed, too. When we were looking at the city map to figure out where to head next, out of nowhere came a flash mob of roller-bladers folled by ambulences and police men. There must have been 3,000 of them!

In fact there were about 3,000, or so the man who explained the situation to us estimated. He told us that the group sometimes reaches 10,000 bladers and that they regularly skate from the Bastille all around Paris every Sunday. Apparently the French police has a special division for police officers on roller-blades and they, along with ambulances, and police vehicles, escort this massive group every week. We were so excited and decided that we would have to try this before leaving Paris.

We hopped on the subway, having already eaten our baguette (oops!), and headed toward the Tour Eiffel. When we got off the subway, it was already in plain sight -- a massive beast sticking out of the trees. We let out our usual girlish screams before preceding to the tower's base.

It was a beautiful day in Paris, and so we headed out the lawn to enjoy the sun and sights. On our way, however, we were bombarded by about 30 Parisians dressed in what seemed to be body armour. They were passing out nerf guns and pulled us over, asking if we wanted to join in their game. I decided to stay with our bags and take photos but encouraged Taylor to take part in the fun! She jumped right in and seemed to have a blast! Nerf guns under the Eiffel Tower? Only in Paris.

We finally met up with the 2 other girls and hung out for a while at the park just in front of the tower. We were slightly uncomfortable with the sheer number of couples publicly displaying their affection (and perhaps procreating? sometimes it looked that intense), but we understood that this was a beautiful day in Paris and romance was in the air -- there were even 4 couples getting married.

At the end of the day, we saw a group of cyclists coming into the lawn who said that they just finished a charity ride all the way from London. Two of them were on a bicycle-built-for-two and came dressed as batman and robin. We congratulated them as they popped open a bottle of champagne in front of the Tower.

The evening came to a close as Taylor and I returned to our apt. and cooked up some dinner (spaghetti with meat and tomatoes in olive oil, and peas on the side). For dessert: Ben and Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough. A day well spent with no money spent.

Total Damages:

0,00 EUR