Saturday is the day that crews clean the streets in Paris, beginning before dawn. Our four-day museum passes have expired, but our seven-day transportation passes have not. So we, too, are cleaning up today on the things to see and do for free in Paris.
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| West facade of Notre Dame in morning sun. |
A discovery is that if one gets up early on a Saturday morning (as we old people tend to do anyway), one can walk right into Notre Dame cathedral without waiting in any line. In fact, one can almost have the whole place to oneself!
Notre Dame is so big that there can be a hundred or so people in it, and it still feels empty. Morning mass was just ending in the choir area. When it was over we went in to take a seat, however we could not take photos from there.
While the cathedral we saw earlier at Chartres rivals this one for basic architecture, as the cathedral for the center of Paris, this one clearly has more resources for keeping things fixed up nicely. This includes refurbished paint on some of the statuary, as well as the carpets and the other decor.
The weather forecast for today was for sunny and warmer, so we dressed accordingly. Unfortunately, we've not yet seen the sun and it's still in the mid-40s with a biting wind. So we elected to jump back on the nice, warm Metro rather than to do much walking.
At Metro stop Anvers, we found ourselves in the Montmartre neighborhood. Our transport passes allowed us another ride, on the funicular to the top of the hill (or "mont") for a visit to Sacre-Coeur (Sacred Heart) Basilica. This Byzantine-style church is only a century old, but looks much older.
After the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, during which Parisians suffered greatly, there was a movement to appease God for the country's liberal sins by building this church on one of the highest points in Paris. Ironically, the construction wasn't finished until 1919, just after the next war of terrible suffering.
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| View of Paris from the steps of Sacre-Coeur |
We popped next door to St. Pierre, by contrast, one of the oldest churches in Paris. The contemporary stained glass does not look out of place in this elegantly simple edifice.
From here we were to take a walking tour of the Montmartre neighborhood, as laid out by one of our guidebooks. Unfortunately, it was not laid out very well, and we got hopelessly lost. Eventually, we managed to see everything noted on the walk, but we walked a lot farther to do it -- including many, many blocks of one of the largest Saturday flea-markets we've ever seen.
One of the sites along the way was Moulin del Galette, an old wind mill turned into a cafe. Another was Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise, a huge cemetery where little houses are built over the graves to provide resting places for mourners. There are even street names and "addresses" for the dead! Some, unfortunately, find themselves buried beneath a highway overpass today.
Finally, our walk ended at the famous Moulin Rouge -- another spot marked with a windmill.
We decided to stop for a coffee to warm up, then continued to the Metro to ride to the Charles de Gaulle stop and see the Arch de Triomphe. That seen (for at least 30 seconds) we headed down the most famous avenue in Paris, the Champs-Elysees.
There is absolutely nothing in these stores that we can afford, much less anything we would particularly want. By our careful calculations, at least 90% of the crowd around us were tourists doing the same thing we were.
We did, however, enjoy stopping in at the shops of the various auto manufacturers along this stretch. These are not dealerships -- one can't actually buy a car here -- but the factories show off their latest high-end models, including some auto show concept cars, and sell all sorts of branded merchandise. Peugeot, Renault, Mercedes, and Toyota were all represented. There were also some brand new Ferraris and Porches parked along the street in strategic locations to attract tourists with cameras.
The Champs-Elysees ends in the same pricey neighborhood where we walked yesterday, but we didn't finish the entire street. Instead, we jumped back on the Metro again part way and headed back to our familiar neighborhood for lunch, and to change into warmer clothes.
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| Carnavalet Museum |
After we stopped shivering, we set out again to visit the Carnavalet Museum, focused on the history of Paris. It's just a short walk from our hotel, and has a particularly good collection focused on the French Revolution. We bought the audio tour in English, because all of the signs are in French.
We also visited the Victor Hugo house, just down the street. It was free, and worth every penny. I'm sure we'd have gotten more out of it if we could read French.
Saturday is a big day for French people to be out and about. Couples, families, groups of friends, all seemed to be shopping a bit, going to museums, or just walking around and window shopping. The streets are crowded, and it's not because they are out enjoying the nice weather. We never did see sun, nor did it ever get anywhere near the forecast high temperature.
We ate at a Sicilian place just a couple blocks from our hotel. We bypassed it before, because we didn't want to eat Italian in France, but it turned out to be one of the best meals we've had here!
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