Martyr Mountain...

*Preface: These pictures from our tour were not meant to be of postcard caliber. But, I think the stories they tell make them worth viewing.* So without further adieu, let's explore Montmartre, Paris!

Trusty guide, Chris the Croatian. He was really entertaining. Our other group members were Australian and American, but the Americans lived in Singapore. Everyone was pumped about the freezing drizzly weather, as you can tell.

The Moulin Rouge. Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor sure make it look sexier, huh?

Moulin Rouge means "red windmill," and it is one of the three remaining windmills in Paris. There were originally fifteen. Moulin Rouge was never a functioning mill, and although its employees won't admit it, the place started as a brothel. It opened the same year as the Eiffel Tower, and supposedly the can-can dance began here. You can get a ticket to see the modern day show, but you better have a deep wallet because one ticket costs between 100 and 150 euros. Each show runs for 10 years and costs 4 million euros to produce with 2 million of that being contributed to costumes alone. The dancers must have professional ballet training in order to audition, and once they make three mistakes during a performance, they are fired. Chris told us that the 'job responsibilities' are not the same as they used to be, but if your daughter worked at the Moulin Rouge, you would tell your friends that she was just a professional dancer.

Vincent Van Gogh’s apartment where he lived with his brother for two years. The current building's residents don’t like tourists, so you can’t actually go in, but Van Gogh's empty apartment has sunflowers in the shutters of the windows. Little fact I didn't know before - Vincent's brother bought the only painting he ever sold during his lifetime. He drew their neighborhood street from their window.

Napoleon the 3rd wanted to beautify Paris, so he adopted the suggestions of an architect named Haussmann. When walking around Paris you will notice standard balconies on the 2nd and 5th floors of most residential buildings. These types of facades are imitated in DC, Chicago, and Canberra. Little background on housing arrangements back in the day. The concierge was a woman who lived on the ground floor and ran the house. Grandparents stayed on the first floor so they had to climb the least stairs. And finally, the youngest family members had the most stairs to climb, living on the highest floors.

Moulin de la Galette. This windmill got its name from the little cakes that the mill workers would eat (galettes), and now there are all kinds of fancy galettes in Parisian cafés.

Before B-Spears or Mariah or Christina, there was France's original pop star, Dalida. Clearly this isn't her, it's just her bust. I don't mean that bust. Her statue. Goodness.

 Some model who worked for Renoir and Picasso had a baby. None of the artists would claim the baby as their own except some obscure painter because he said that if the boy grew up to be a great artist, he would spread the fame of his last name. That boy did indeed grow up to become relatively famous, and his  "pink house" is now required by law to remain pink because that’s how the artist painted it. Sorry, I can't remember the family name. Haha. I know that was kind of the point of the story, the whole name recognition part. Give me a break - there was a lot of info thrown at me, and I didn't get it written down. 

Marcel Ayme was a French author who wrote a book about a man who could walk through walls, and this man went to the doctor to get pills to cure his condition. He falls in love with a married woman and decides his condition comes in handy because he gets to see his new lover by walking through the walls of her apartment when her husband is gone. Then on one of the days he was scheduled to visit her, he got a bad headache. So he accidentally took his pills that prevent him from walking through walls instead of his pills to relieve headaches. Lo and behold, he got stuck in the middle of the wall and never made it to his woman. This is the statue that commemorates him. Right off of Marcel Ayme Square is Avenue Junot, the location of the most expensive addresses in Paris. 8 million euros per apartment! Totally worth it, right?

Among other things, we saw a restaurant/cabaret called Lapin a’Gile. I believe the venue's name was a play on words because the word for rabbit is ‘lapin,’ and the artist who decorated the exterior with a painted rabbit had the last name "Gile." In its heyday, this cabaret was the gathering place for artists. Picasso once paid for his meal with a painting. The cabaret sold that painting a few years later for about 20 bucks. Decades later, the painting sold for 40 million dollars. Not far from Lapin a'Gile is a crappy little vineyard on the side of a hill in between some buildings. Not surprisingly, the wine made from this vineyard is really expensive but tastes horrible. They just keep the vineyard there to say it is the last one in the city proper so that they can charge more. We also stopped at the statue of Saint Denis, the patron saint of the city. He was beheaded for spreading Christianity/Catholicism to the original Parisian villagers. Legend has it that he carried his head in his hands for 6 days before he actually died, meanwhile his detached mouth kept preaching. Hence the origin of the neighborhood's name, Montmartre = Mountain of the Martyr. And finally, we walked down (or rather, up) the highest street in Paris towards the Sacré Coeur basilica.

Sacré Coeur. Tah dah!

We may or may not have taken a sneaky picture of the mosaic ceiling despite being told that photography was prohibited. Yes, I feel guilty.

The church is decorated in grand Byzantine style. It is the highest point in Paris besides the Eiffel Tower. Its builders thought constructing a church on a hill in the bohemian art district would bring light and morality to the area. In Chris' words - "It did not." But it remains an emblematic part of the skyline. After grabbing a cup of mulled wine/cider, we opted to take the cable car back down to street level instead of risking it on the wet flights of stairs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this little adventure off the beaten path. I don't think there is any better way to see a city than through a local's eyes. We never would have found any of these remote sites without Croatian Chris, and even if we had seen them, we wouldn't have known their stories. I'll be looking up Free City Tours on all our future trips to European cities. *Preview for next post: We will get back on the very beaten path for some pics from Disneyland Paris, the Eiffel Tower, and Versailles! Stay tuned.*