Montmartre excursion

If you were to visit Paris for a week or so, what sites would you want to see?  I was very surprised when one of my friends told me the top three most visited sites in Paris.  You can probably guess two out of the three.

Number 1: the Eiffel tower.  Duh.

Number 3: Notre-Dame cathedral.  Another duh.

But can you guess number two?  What in Paris is MORE visited than Notre Dame besides the Eiffel tower?  My mother's wrong guesses: the Champs Elysees/Arc de Triomphe; the Louvre; Pere Lachaise.

Nope.  It's Montmartre/Sacre Coeur.  Weird, right?  I couldn't guess it.  But as soon as my friend said it I realized it must be true.  I have almost never seen as many tourists consistently flooding an entire neighborhood as in Montmartre.  Seriously, you can't even walk on the streets in the summertime.

A couple of weekends ago some IFSers took a trip up to Montmartre.  Our first stop was the Montmartre cemetery.  It's pretty cool and has a lot of famous people buried there.  The one thing that makes it a little weird it that it's now in the middle of a bunch of Metro tracks and major roads.

The Paris cemeteries are not much like the ones in the US.  Most of them look like this, filled with slab tombs and mausoleums:

Those who are buried there are mostly the wealthy of Paris, so many have unique statues and such that were commissioned.

The individuality of the deceased is very important, as exemplified by this very strange ancient Egyptian style mauseleum:

I was interested in finding a few graves, these two in particular.  Berlioz, a composer, and Francois Truffaut, who directed movies like the 400 Blows and Breathless.  Very shiny.

Our next stop was a cafe, as per usual.  It was a rather cold day and we needed some coffee/hot chocolate to warm up.  Being our group, though, we got sidetracked at a bookstore.  I was really pleased with myself that I resisted buying books for me and just bought (possibly an excessive amount) some children's books for my youngest niece - the people working there were very helpful when I asked what books were popular with French kids.  The others went on a book-buying rampage, getting works of Zola, Genet, Camus, Sartre, Beckett, and many more.  When we left we heard them musing about the strangeness of a group of American students buying so many great works in French.

Then we made our way to Sacre Coeur, of course, where all trips to Montmartre must lead.  The crush of tourists was overwhelming and we voted not to go inside but to leave as fast as we could.

In all honesty, I don't like Sacre Coeur and wouldn't even if it weren't constantly filled with tourists.  I think it's ugly and rather gauche; stylistically it does not fit with the rest of Paris and all and it shows a distasteful Orientalism.  Personally I think it looks like a pile of whipped cream from afar.  The inside is even worse, with ugly neo-Byzantine mosaics, a poor layout, and a general atmosphere of, "look how grand and rich this church is!"

 All right, it's majestic.  It's supposed to be.  In fact, it was supposed to be a grand show of France's strength after the country's miserable defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and the troubles of the Commune.  The Montmartre neighborhood was the most active and rebellious in the Commune and the conservative government at the time wanted to demonstrate that they kept power over the working class, and that the Church still had power.  It's a monument of power and a show of strength; it's not meant to be a sacred place where people would want to go to worship.

With all that behind it I just can't bring myself to appreciate the monument, even if it were aesthetically pleasing (which I don't think it is).

Anyway, the redeeming part of the place is that it has a very nice view.  Here is the sparsely tourist-populated section of the grounds in front:

And the view of Paris.  I live close to the dome in the middle, which is the Pantheon.

Finally we stopped at a fondue place for dinner, the same restaurant I mentioned in one of my last posts from my last trip - they serve wine in baby bottles and the proprietor is a very surly, friendly, funny, slightly creepy old man.


Tomorrow: Mom and I are going to Reims to visit many historical sites and take lots of pictures!