A Week in Paris, part one; or, Montmartre & the Louvre

A walk about Paris will provide

lessons in history, beauty,

and in the point of Life.

-Thomas Jefferson

The Tuileries Garden---so lovely!

Summer is here, which means visits from family and friends, beach time, and finally, a trip to Paris.

I say "finally" because I've only wanted to go to Paris since I was 4 years old.

My parents went way back in the 1970s and brought me back a stuffed Babar that said several phrases in French when you pulled a cord. Over the years, the speaking mechanism broke and then his felt material disintegrated, and I had to finally, sadly part with him during our big move from Texas to Cuba.

Besides a French-speaking elephant, I had a childhood full of some unusual bedtime stories, including stories about Versailles (and the beheading of Marie Antoinette---it was a very interesting childhood). Flash forward many, many years, and I had to learn all about the French Revolution in detail to teach A Tale of Two Cities.

Throughout my life, I guess Paris has always been a little on my mind.

It was a perfect place to celebrate our 25th anniversary for a week.

A little over a week since we've gotten back, I've had time to reflect on the things we absolutely did right and will do again:

got a week's pass on the metro system that also worked on the bus system
bought the 4 day museum pass that got us into several museums AND let us skip to the head of the line
used Google maps to navigate the city, which was very specific on how to get on and off the metro system---this was especially helpful when half the transportation lines closed down for Bastille Day parades and the World Cup viewing party

And now for some photos and descriptions of a few of our Paris adventures (click on photos for larger view):

Montmartre

We stayed at the Terrass Hotel, which was wonderful, right in the heart of the Montmartre neighborhood. Over the course of the week, we explored several restaurants and the Montmartre cemetery (home of some famous people, like Edgar Degas and Alexandre Dumas, and dozens of cats). Sacre Coeur is on top of a hill and can be seen from all over Paris and is a great place to view the city. The Moulin Rouge and its very Bourbon Street-esque surroundings were only a few blocks away. I loved this neighborhood! We found a little bar that was our spot for an afternoon coffee and/or beer and was perfect for people-watching. Our first night, we shared a few beers there with a couple of pilots from Spain, including one who lives about 20 miles from us, which sort of proves the theory that the big world is a really small place, when it comes down to it.

Montmartre has a great vibe. We ate Vietnamese, German, and Turkish food here and saw great street art at every turn (and I even took my husband on an unsuccessful search for a recently painted Banksy). We sat in a cafe at the edge of the park by Sacre Coeur for hours, watching street artists paint and sketch passerbys. We took wrong turns and found great little hole-in-the-wall cafes, and at the end of the week, figured out the metro and bus stops pretty well. It feels like a city within a city and used to be its own independent town from Paris before being officially annexed as part of the city in the mid 1800s.

View from our hotel balcony

Street scene after the World Cup victory

Sacre Coeur

Day two included some adventures into the heart of Paris and we eventually found our way to the Louvre.

The Louvre

What can I say about the Louvre? It's almost overwhelming with its labyrinth of rooms. Converting a palace from the 1500s into a museum in the late 1700s is wonderful in theory, at least. The building has gorgeous frescos---I saw a man lying on the floor, which is really the best way to take in some of the rooms, with their elaborate ceilings and walls. That being said---the layout is rather confusing and the way many rooms tie together leads to a congestion of people that seemed to be amplified by the fact that is was a sweltering 90+ degrees throughout the museum. I had my feet stepped on and had people walk right in front of me (usually to take a selfie) too many times to count. The most mind-boggling part was the people who had to be told---sometimes more than once---do not touch the art. I was gobsmacked. Anyway, I can say I've seen the Louvre, but I didn't even see all of the "big three" (Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus) because I was hot, cranky, and ready to get some fresh air. And honestly, it wasn't worth going back to try to see what we missed the first time around.

I don't regret seeing it because it's THE LOUVRE, after all. I would definitely recommend going during a not-so-hot time of year and when there aren't as many tourists (and pay for a guide---we didn't, and everything is labeled only in French). Many of those Paris bedtime stories from the 1970s included descriptions of some of the art from there so I had to see it for myself. But we found so many other gems of museums that I would recommend in addition to (or dare I say it? --- in place of) the Louvre in a heartbeat.