Monday 4 June 2012

Sunny Montmartre

I stand by my decision to not live in Montmartre.

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It's lovely, for sure. Picture-book pretty. The hilly streets with adorable shops and cafes and charming old apartments, everything winding up to a glaringly white and ornately scalloped basilica.

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We worked our way towards the top, getting very lost in the process as the streets here are a little skewed...but we weren't in a hurry and there was lots of good stuff to see along the way. As long as you keep going uphill, you really aren't that lost.

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There was a small but good DalĂ­ museum. They had a lot of his later work, wonderfully weird sculptures, doodles,illustrations and a great deal of intimate photographs taken by a close friend. Not as nightmare-inducing as the R Crumb exhibit we saw at the Modern a couple weeks ago, but spend too much time in a surrealist's mind and you start to get a little weird yourself.

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There's flea markets that you actually want to buy stuff, more Grand Prix de la Meilleure award winners than any other neighborhood, and a tiny vineyard right across from the Cabaret where Picasso and his cronies were known to spend a great deal of their time.

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They have also apparently declared Miles Davis as their patron saint. Nice.

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Its a bit of a zoo here on the weekends, with some streets nearly impassable and clogged with tourist getting their caricatures drawn by street artist. The musicians and street performers do make for a lively and fun scene.

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It wasn't an orignal part of the city plan, but rather a town on the outskirts that got absorbed eventually as Paris expanded. It retains the feeling of a village within a city.

2 comments:

  1. Glad to see you are having fun in Paris! It's nice to see places I have been...Montmartre was one of my favorites! I still have the art I bought from street artists.
    Meghan :)

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    1. Wait...you are a Mrs now?? Do tell...

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