It’s the middle of the night, but we’re lying in bed, wide awake. We were both asleep for a while, but we’re wide awake now. It’s pitch dark. What time is it, anyway? 2:00 AM. Ugh. I guess we haven’t gotten all the jet lag out of our systems yet. It’s 6:00 PM yesterday back home.
On the other hand, maybe it’s because of the sugar ingested in last night’s late-night taste test of macarons. Not likely – my wife only had one small bite. I had to do the heavy lifting myself. If that was the cause of me being wide awake at 2:00 AM, it was worth it!
Today we’re going to go to that venerable Parisian tourist attraction called “Montmartre.” Are you ready for some pronunciation? OK, let’s dive right in. It’s pronounced, “monh-mahrt-ruh.” Note that the first “t” is silent, but the second “t” is pronounced. I’ve found that little things like that make a surprisingly big difference.
As for that little “re” on the tail end… that’s kind of tricky. It’s pronounced, but just barely pronounced, as if it’s an after-thought. It’s tacked onto a lot of french words. Some people pronounce it more clearly than others. Some people leave it off all together, although if you asked them, they’d probably swear that they said it.
I went on another foraging run early this morning. Bought some bananas from the vegetable guy. Went back to the bakery. Got another pain aux raisins, (“pan-oh-raze-anh”). Mmmmm – so good.
Getting to Montmartre
To get to Montmartre, we took the Metro, using some of the tickets we bought yesterday. We were there in no time at all . Well, almost there. Montmartre is on top of a hill, and the Metro only goes to the base of the hill. There’s a funicular that goes up to the top, but from where we exited the Metro, it was nowhere in sight.
There was a hallway that just about everyone who got off the Metro was walking into, where we saw a sign that pointed the way to Montmartre. From the hallway, everyone entered a spiral staircase and started climbing up. We didn’t know any better, so we started climbing, too.
We climbed and climbed and climbed. It seemed like that staircase was going to spiral around forever. We started passing people who were slowing down or who had stopped to rest. It was brutal. The staircase was inside, too. Totally enclosed. The air inside was starting to heat up from all those huffing and puffing bodies.
Every time we’d go around the spiral we expected to see a door leading out, but over and over again there was nothing to see but more steps. Eventually we were pretty much the only ones still going up. Practically everyone who had made it this far had stopped to catch their breath. There should have been a warning at the entrance for people who have baggage or who are short of breath. Seriously!
Finally, we popped out into the sun. What a workout! Where the heck was that funicular? What mad Frenchman devised this scheme for getting to Montmarte? Maybe it was the same guy who invented the guillotine! We’d made it, anyway. We were at the top of the hill, and we could see a cobblestone street that led to the main square where all the action is.
Montmartre Back in the Day
Montmartre became well-known back at the turn of the 20th century, when it was the happenin’ place to be for people who liked to paint, drink, carry on, and go places where children weren’t allowed. This was THE place to be if you wanted to be a great painter, and a lot of them lived and worked here: Degas, Monet, Renoir, Lautrec, and many others.
The way I understand it, they’d spend all their time hanging out in clubs where dancing girls did the can-can and bands played the latest tunes, and they’d paint. Hang out and paint. Hang out and paint. I can see how that lifestyle might have a certain appeal to it, eh?
Toulouse Lautrec’s posters to advertise for clubs became famous works of art in their own right, and by looking at them, one can get the idea of the goings-on. One of his frequent employers, the Moulin Rouge, (“The Red Windmill”), started here about that time, and is still going strong. (I assume they have new dancers now. Doh!)
One of my favorite paintings from this era is one by Renoir called “Bal du Moulin de la Galette” (Dance at the Galette Windmill). He painted it in 1876. It’s a painting showing 19th century Parisians whooping it up on a Sunday afternoon at a club in Montmartre.
Those days are long gone, but there are still a lot of painters here. They set up their easels in the central square under some big trees. They sit there and paint and sell their works to the zillions of people that pass by.
Restaurants line the square. Each one has a section where tables are set up under big tents outside, in the middle of the square. They cater mainly to tourists, so they have all the classic French dishes like French onion soup and beef bourguignon. And wouldn’t you know it – it’s lunchtime!
To be continued…
For travel-related details, see Montmartre in the Travel Info Pages.
Photo Credits:
Artists lined up in Place du Tertre, Montmartre.© T.w. Van Urk | Dreamstime.com
Montmartre funicular photo: Anthony Atkielski on Wikipedia-en.
