Sept 15-16 Momtmartre and the Louvre

September 17, 2024

Our second full day in Paris had us relying on shoe leather and not the Metro. We started the day with a stereotypically French coffee and croissant at a stereotypically French cafe, then walked across town to the neighborhood of Montmartre. This is an area renowned for its Bohemian lifestyle, the imposing Sacre Coeur basilica, and the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret. It was also a popular haunt for many of the famous French painters such as Monet, Picasso, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

We had prebooked a guided walking tour through Montmartre, and we arrived early enough for our own unguided wander, which proved to be somewhat eye-opening. In one stretch we passed by fourteen different businesses before encountering one that was not a purveyor of sex toys or peep shows or leather lingerie. Definitely not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!

Our guided tour ignored the existence of these stores and instead focused on the history of the Moulin Rouge and the art culture that was prevalent back in the day. It was a decidedly uphill walk to our goal of the Sacred Coeur, which looks down over all of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower. The only mishap was when one of the tour group got thumped on the head by the side mirror of a passing behemoth bus. It was the first accident we witnessed since the evening before when a cyclist and a pedal cab had an unceremonious meeting. This is definitely a city where it’s imperative to pay attention whether on foot or any wheeled conveyance. Luckily, none of the victims described here suffered more than just a flesh wound.
Our tour guide, Benedicte, could not resist the opportunity to regale us with yet another story of someone having their head lopped off before releasing us to enjoy the rest of our day.
This story ended with the victim chasing down his own head like a recovered fumble, so I’m a little bit skeptical.

We successfully navigated our way back to the hotel with the aid of Yvette, the name we have assigned to our French GPS. Yvette has replaced our English GPS, who we named something that starts with B, ends in h and is five letters long. We left her somewhere in the English Channel.
Day three was another early start as we hiked our way to the Louvre Museum. It turned out to be a brilliant strategy to have an entry time first thing in the morning. We managed easily to elbow our way to the front of the line to admire the Mona Lisa. The crowds were also not too bad around the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. A couple of hours later the tour buses had rolled in and the place was crawling with people.

In all, we spent about 3 hours in the Louvre viewing all kinds of antiquities and allowing Debbie an appropriate amount of Da Vinci Code imagery.

Having topped up our art and culture levels, we next found our way to the Champs Elysees and followed it to the Arc de Triomphe. This was a very successful walk because we didn’t buy anything. Adding to the success was the fact that we knew better than to try to cross the ridiculous roundabout that swirls about the monument with Lord knows how many lanes. We found the tunnel that goes beneath the streets and then climbed the 284 steps required to take in some pretty amazing views of the city in all directions.
From there, we found our way to the banks of the Seine and boarded a tour boat that took us the length of the historic part of Paris and back again. Along the way we saw several of the vessels that had been used to parade in the athletes at the recent Olympic Games. The river is also a pretty good vantage point for viewing the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre and a bunch of other Parisian landmarks.
We chose to find a venue for an early dinner near the river, and Debbie and I distressed Don in an extreme way by ordering the Burgundy snails. Don is more a meat and potatoes guy.

After dinner we hung around one of the bridges with a great view of the tower, and were rewarded with the light show that happens for five minutes at the top of every hour after dark. It was a really cool spectacle.
We then learned that Yvette is not above taking us down some very sketchy roads and alleys after dark, so we found a cab to take us home. The cabbie spoke no English, didn’t understand our fractured French and had never heard of our hotel or the street it is on, but he did know exactly how far he could push the traffic laws of Paris, and he succeeded in delivering us safely back. Another excellent day in the books!