Tuesday, June 15th - More magic...

Imagine a tiny apartment in Paris furnished with lovely antiques and lovingly used furniture, doll house like in it's size, comfortable, equipped with everything you would need for a short stay - even a long one, if your schedule allowed.  Imagine that within walking distance of your front door there is a patisserie with wonderful baguettes and rolls, cakes and cookies and that it is open early in the morning!!  Imagine that within two blocks there is one of the biggest and best markets in the city with rows and rows of all you could want from eel to pocketbooks!  Imagine that the city transit system is within blocks no matter which way you go, that there is a grocery store within five minutes and a wine store around the corner.  Imagine a cafe at one end of your street and beautiful parks at the other with historical monuments and fountains at your intersections.  You're in Pareeee and in our "space".

Imagine, too, that you get the chance to have a "french experience", that you come home from your magical first night out and the kitchen floor is wet and you have to find a plumber, that the apartment "manager" tried to stop the leak but it got worse.  That you don't speak French so you are glad you have the phone numbers of your owner's friends so they can call the "urgent plumber" for you.  That the urgent plumber says that someone will be there in 30 minutes and two hours later you are still using the turkey baster under the sink to control the water.  That when the plumber comes to the door in the waiting area and you don't believe he is the plumber because he is young and gorgeous so you don't let him in!

Imagine going down the street to your own patisserie for your pastry for breakfast the next morning, little works of art begging you to take them home.  Only too happy to oblige.  Oh, heaven.  

If you can imagine all of that, then you are right there with us in Paris, city of contrasts.  You are at Montmartre, the highest point in Paris and the location of SacréCoeur, beautifully appointed with marble and gold, colossal in its size, monumental in its inspiration.  Outside, you are accosted with sellers of postcards, barefooted beggars, tourists with cameras.  Perhaps you are at Galleries Lafayette, a store built in the early 1900's with the vernacular of a cathedral, a stained glass dome worthy of any worshiper, wall carvings as if it were a great hall, sale signs of 50% off the underwear and still too expensive to replace the ones John forgot to pack.  You are walking the streets, looking in windows arranged as if works of art whether they display food or shoes or loaves of bread.  You are overwhelmed with the beauty of the Opera House, appalled at the trash in some parks.  You are in a city, any city perhaps, but this one is startling in its beauty..... and you are anxious to see more.

So Robin took us Tuesday morning to  Montmartre - the highest peak in Paris topped by the SacreCoeur.  This basilica is a stunner.  Hard to describe but a great place to start your introduction to Parisian landmarks and sacred places.  Pictures will have to do it for me

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The view of Paris from this, its highest point, accentuates how big this city really is.  Even on a foggy day.

You can see the Eiffel Tower from almost any place in the city, often peeking in between the trees as here on the Mont appearing ethereal and mysterious.

We climbed hundreds of stairs to get to Mont Martr including in the Metro station when the lift was an alternative.  We went around and around and around and around and up and up and up and up and at the top, legs aching and chests heaving, we decided that if there were EVER a lift available, now we know why we should take it!  Then we had to climb more to get up the hills to get to the Mont and Robin said the last flight alone - and there were several flights before to the Basilica - had 82 steps!  So we did the logical thing, we took the Funiculair down!  Why we didn't take it up, I don't know but it wasn't worth a Metro ticket to take it down!

Going from the sacred to the secular, our next stop down the hills - with a few shops as diversions - was the Gallerie Lafayette.  This is not the domed ceiling of a church but of a retail store built in 1906!

 The atrium this tops is 5 or 6 floors high and each floor surrounds the atrium with heavily carved balconies displaying goods.  Not quite Macy's but it will do!

It's food hall is known as the Harrod's of Paris - can't imagine why...  These are just the spices!

After more walking and walking and looking in shops, we stopped in a typical cafe and had Salad Nicoise, wine and more bread, compliments of Robin.  Parisian cafes are fun with half the people sitting outside at little tables, the chairs all facing the street so they can watch the world go by, drinking their wine or espresso, reading their papers and many smoking their cigarettes! I would have loved to do that - not the smoking part!

Now it was time to take in the opera house, Palais Garnier.  Wedding cake exterior, opulent interior, lavish with statuary, marble and gild.  Criticized at its inception, it is now considered one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.  It is one of those places where once your jaw drops in amazement, it rarely closes until you leave!  Every surface of public space is decorated to astound.

This is the grand staircase!  Just one level of it.....

surrounded by balconies where attendees would see and be seen and here's a casual room for intermission!

There were student groups all over the place with guides, sitting on the floor as in the picture above, and I envied this country that they had such outstanding buildings and art and heritage and history to teach their children. 

We had worn ourselves out by now, so we worked our way back to our neighborhood and our own grocery store and patisserie to get our goodies.  We had had lunch in a little sandwich shop where small glasses of wine were on the counter sealed with an aluminum peel-off top much like a yogurt serving in our groceries.  Had to have one just for the fun of it.

Entertainment on the Metro....

Dinner at home again seemed to be our style.  I hear that's what the natives do - lunch at a restaurant and dinner at home.  Baguette, butter, olives, cheeses, and a very good wine we had discovered the day before for only 4 euros a bottle.  Stocked up on those!!  Plus the kitchen floor was dry!  (If you don't understand that comment, you missed yesterday!)