montmartre

30 octobre 2012

i did this really fun walk with natey and alicia!

nate and i met up on line 12 and went to our metro stop at jules joffrin. alicia met us there and then we took the bus up to sacre coeur, the huge cathedral that overlooks all of paris. 

from the basilica, there is the most amazing view of the entire city. i can't even get over it. it was so fun to look out over paris and pick out places that i know. it made me feel like i am beginning to understand this city. i can't say i understand it - not completely. i think that it would take years to even begin to understand it. it is so complex. my host mom says that even she doesn't know everything about it, and she has lived here her whole life (minus 15 years in nyc).

anyway. i feel like i'm finally beginning to understand this amazing city.

i loved being inside sacre coeur. it is such a massive church. it was built after the franco-prussian war of 1870, when france lost. it was a complete disaster. napoléon iii lost his power and was ultimately defeated at waterloo. (yes, click on that link, you won't be sorry.) ashley benning says that it is her favorite place in paris. i lit a little candle for her there :)

then we wandered into the église saint-pierre. it has been around since 1147. that is a long time, if you ask me.

we also found the place du tertre, which was a really fun little square where street artists sell their pieces. some of them weren't that impressive...but a lot of them i absolutely loved. i may or may not have bought a little tiny one for myself. i just couldn't resist!

we also found the musée du vieux monmartre, but we didn't get to go inside because it was closed (a lot of museums are closed on tuesdays - boo).

just a little ways away from the museum, there was a little vineyard. nothing too impressive, but a vineyard nonetheless. it was so awesome. it was a little piece of home for me in the middle of a big city. i loved it.

we saw lots of little places where people like gertrude stein and pablo picasso loved to hang out or eat. it reminded me of the movie midnight in paris. i wish i could have seen paris in those times. especially after seeing peoples' houses, like renoir and van gogh. i would have loved to casually run into either of them.

awe also found a park, with a statue of saint-denis holding his head. he was beheaded by the romans in the 3rd century, and legend has it that he carried his head down the north side of montmartre before collapsing. craaaaay craaaaaay. alicia and i played on the teeter-totter at the park. and then we went on it with natey, who flung us into the air. i feared for my life a couple of times and could not stop laughing. sometimes i think i am still five years old at heart. and when i say sometimes i really mean all the time.

we wandered around a few more streets, up and down some hills, and eventually we found the outdoor-dance-hall called moulin de la galette. renoir painted the piece, bal du moulin de la galette, from a dance here. it's in the orsay, and we actually looked at it a few weeks ago in our art history class! i love how everything here connects in all of our classes. it's so cool to actually SEE history as i am learning it. i love that about paris.

at the end our our walk, we found the moulin rouge. it wasn't part of the walk, but since it was only a few blocks away, we decided we needed to go see it. it wasn't anything super impressive - in my mind - but it had to be done because it's such an icon.

good walk! :)

sorry, still won't let me upload photos.