Montmartre Walk

After sitting around most of yesterday we felt we needed to be tourists on le dimanche. So we grabbed our Rick Steves' Paris and headed off to where all of the tourists go on le dimanche... to church! Sacre-Coeur is visible from a lot of places in Paris and Kathleen kept asking about it so off we went. There was no doubt about which direction you should head in once you came out of the metro as there were about a million people crammed onto this one street. Every small shop was there just for le touriste. It was amazing as you could get 12 carte postale for a euro or two! We did manage to get suckered into string bracelets made quickly while the nice, English speaking, Kenyan was talking a mile a minute. At least the next time we were approached we could flash our bracelets and they could leave us alone....no... he would do one for our hair!!!
Once you get beyond the very busy street the view of Sacre-Coeur on the hill hits you. It was a beautiful climb up many steps where MANY people had also decided to check out Paris from atop this hill. It was a beautiful clear day and many of the tourist and possibly many of the natives as well had decided that a picnic would be nice. Rick Steves did warn us that Sunday, in the middle of the day, would be the worse time to go! Fortunately, he also guided us away from the mainstream and we had a nice little walk through streets where many famous artistes had once resided and worked. We could imagine ghosts of Dali, Renoir, Picasso, Toulouse-Latrec, Van Gogh, and Edith Piaf wandering about the streets and visiting the Cabaret de Patachou, La Maison Rose Restaurant, Au Lapin Agile Cabaret or the Moulin Rouge. There was actually a women trying to earn her living by imitating Edith Piaf in the first square we came to. She was pretty good and really set the mood. That mood carried us into the place du Tertre where other artists were trying to earn a living quickly drawing your picture. Some of them were also very good and some of the other paintings were very appealing. We will return again some day soon and we may even purchase a memory.
Back on the trail of dead poets we also found a bar that was made famous by a popular french film called Amelie. Much of the movie took place in the Cafe des Deux Moulins (named so because there are only two surviving windmills where there had once been 30) and groupies of the movie come to see it. We noticed in the window that there was a notice that if you could answer five trivia questions about the movie correctly they would give you a free drink. We need to come back with Megan who knows that movie very well! The tour ended at the Moulin Rouge where one can still see can-can girls dancing except that there was something else going on there on this Sunday as there were hundreds of young people gathered and they were all punked out in glorious black outfits! We stayed clear of the crowd and also avoided the Museum of Erotic Art (the first time I read that I thought it said exotic art and was intrigued) while we headed back to the metro. It was a lovely walk on a lovely Paris day! Then we headed home a attempted to cook an authentic Mexican meal of Fajitas for our Danish friends who had also resided in California for a few years and missed the food. They brought the Corona and we fried the steak and a good time was had by all. I can't believe this is nearly the end of January already! We are excited about the prospects of visitors in the month of February. Until we blog again! Take care and stay dry (CA).