Au Revoir

I woke up early Sunday morning to go to Montmartre, the arts district of Paris. It was the fourth day of the local wine festival. I took a tour, despite the rain. The Abbesses metro stop is the only one i saw where everyone took the elevator up. Montmartre is on the biggest hill in Paris, and the climb out of the metro is way too steep and too long. The tour started by the only brick church in Paris. 

Montmartre wasn't always part of Paris. It was a countrified village outside of Paris, full of windmills and gypsum mines. Because it wasn't in Paris, the rent was a lot cheaper so it attracted (and still does attract) artists. Van Gogh lived on the top level pictured below:

Though most of the windmills are gone, they are still the symbol of Montmartre. That's why the original Moulin Rouge put a windmill on its roof. We saw one of the few originals that remain:

There is a lot of local street art around the neighborhood. One piece is from the short story, "The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls":

The wine festival was celebrating the harvest from the small vineyard there. It's the last remaining one in Paris and was originally much larger. This bit has been maintained by the locals. The wine is actually supposed to be horrible, but the bottles are auctioned off at astronomical prices because of how hard it is to get. 

Across the street is the oldest cabaret in Paris, Lapin Agile:

The tour ended outside the Sacre Coeur. The national church is directly next to the local Catholic church and has a controversial history. In 1871, the Paris Commune was formed and anarchists and Marxists ruled Paris temporarily. It was a very revolutionary time in European history and most of the revolutions ended violently, including this one. The French Army took back the city during La Semaine Sanglante (the Bloody Week). Over 20,000 working class Parisians were executed as a result of the revolution. After this, the Church  decided to build the Sacre Coeur as a repentance for those deaths and the National Assembly voted to dedicate it to them. Many working class people, including the residents of Montmartre, saw it instead as a symbol of domination. The original plan was actually to knock down the local church, but there were too many objections. Even though the church is a beautiful sight from close up or anywhere in Paris, it's sad to think about how it's affected the character of the neighborhood. Most tourists only go to Sacre Coeur when they visit this area, missing everything else.

The view from the top of Montmartre was breathtaking, despite the fog that had descended upon the city:

My last stop in Paris was L'As Du Falafel, which was strongly recommended by Fran and Bob. It is the most famous falafel shop and it's in la Ville des Juifs (Jew City). That was probably my favorite meal of the weekend.

It was so hard to leave Paris and I still can't believe how lucky I am to have visited. I found out that I can still speak French, but my accent is as atrocious as ever. I'm so grateful to Fran and Bob for housing and feeding me. It felt like a weekend away from college/study abroad life to be in a real home with family. I basically have to go back to Paris when the weather is nicer because I did not even attempt to go near the Eiffel Tower or Versailles. I would also love to see more of France. And thanks to any readers who managed to get through the franglais I dropped in to these four blog posts.