Friday, 23rd June 2017
I found a crêperie quickly as there
are many in the area. This place is also swarming with tourists, and was very
crowded, but I came during the slow time, when restaurants are usually closed
for lunch, but since this was such a touristy place most the restaurants were
still open. It was nice having the restaurant to myself while crowds of people
walked by outside. I ordered their specialty, ham mozzarella cheese, mushrooms,
tomato sauce, and egg. It was ok, and probably more than ok because I was very hungry,
but it tasted like pizza, which was a bit disappointing. I don’t think pizza
when I think crepe.
The best part about it was that the chef
was sitting at a table having a cigarette, and the waiter started yelling at
him for not helping to serve people outside, and sitting down while he was doing
all the work. It was a full on man tantrum. I’ve never seen anyone get that mad
in public before. I have to say it was the greatest entertainment one could ask
for with a crepe.
I booked another walking tour for
6pm that night, so while I waited I walked around Monmartre and looked at all
the shops. I tried to avoid the touristy shops, as they all had the same thing
anyways, but I found a nice jewelry shop, and a handmade clothing store with
lots of linens and dresses. There were also many cute patisseries and glacé
shops.
The walking tour met in front of
Starbucks and the Moulin Rouge (by the way there are so many Starbucks in
France, and 2 in Monmartre). Our guide was a quirky Irish guy with more of an
American accent than Irish. His mother is Irish and his father is American, but
he traveled to France once and never left. He’s been giving tours for 2 years
now. We got to learn the history of the Moulin Rouge, which was interesting.
Originally ladies only kicked high enough to show their ankles. Then this lady,
the star of the show L- started kicking higher, showing her knees, until
finally she said to hell with it, I’m going to kick as high as I can. She
kicked a man’s top hat off and caught it in her hand. She is essentially the
inventor of the can-can. Well then, she started cutting holes in her tights and
underwear. Then, everybody else did. They actually had to create a law that
made it illegal to wear underwear with pantyhose that were cut. So every night
before the girls would perform, someone from the police was sent to every show
to check the girls beforehand to make sure they didn’t have any holes in their
stockings and underwear.
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| Inside the creperie |
We stopped outside the house of
Pablo Picasso, and got to hear all about his life, which was really sad. He was
a drunk, and he used his mouth to clean his paintbrushes, so he probably had
lead poisoning as well as some mental issues, maybe schizophrenia, bi-polar
etc. He got a girl pregnant and left her which is when he came to Monmartre
because his brother lived there, and he was basically a freeloader for many
years. He also didn’t start painting until he was 27 years old. Up until then
he had only sketched, but he was fired from his job as an art dealer because he
would yell at customers and basically had bad behavior all around. So he
decided he ought to try painting himself. He painted while he lived in
Monmartre with his brother, but he suffered from severe headaches and he
finally checked himself into an asylum and it was there he had his most
productive period. He lived there for a few years. There is a theory that he
cut off part of his ear to try and distract from the pain of the headaches. Though,
I don’t remember why he sent that piece of his ear to a woman. When he left asylum
he began to go downhill once again, and finally a year or two later he tried to
kill himself by going into a field and shooting himself in the chest. He missed
his heart but the bullet did not go all the way through him. Someone found him,
and he died 27 hours later in the arms of his brother.
Next we walked past some men in a
little gated park playing piccoult a game with a ball where you try to throw it
as close to this other wooden ball without actually hitting it. It was really
cute to see all these local neighborhood people gathered together, and all
these old men involved in their game. Inside the park is a statue of St. Denis
who was martyred and said to have picked up his head after it was cut off and
carried it about 10 steps then asked to be buried in that spot, which is now
the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. Funny story, the people who killed him were pagans. It
was illegal to be Christian. The pagans thought Christians were cannibals,
incestuous, and child murderers. All one big misunderstanding. You see,
Christians invited people to come eat the body and drink the blood of this guy
name Jesus=cannibalism. Then they keep marrying people who referred to each
other as brother and sister, taken literally the pagans thought this was
incest. And lastly, the pagans witness Christians fully submerging children in
water for baptism. I guess the pagans didn’t stick around long enough to see
the kids get pulled out of the water. |
| Vineyard in Monmartre |
I’m skipping a lot of parts, like
the street art of Mystique, a singer who lived there De Nilas, and a writer who
wrote about a man who could walk through walls. But I figure I’m only going to
write the most interesting parts.
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| pub that famous artists used to hang out at |
Next we get the La Maison Rose. I was
so excited about this part, because I had walked past this house already and
wondered if there was a story behind it. Well, yes there is, though it’s
probably a joke and not really true. A woman painter lived there, she would
pose for other painters as well, and was kind of a promiscuous model. She fell
pregnant and didn’t know who the father was. She approached Renoir and told him
he was the father. Renoir said he’s not my kid, the coloring is all wrong. So
then she approached Degas and told him he was the father, and he said it’s not
my kid, the perspective is all wrong. So she goes back to La Maison Rose to
have a drink and a man asks her what’s wrong. She tells him she has no father
for her son, and he’s going to have a rough life, and her son has no last name,
and he’s going to be mocked all his life, and she’s a terrible mother etc. So
the man, who is also a painter says she can give her son his name. She asks him
why he is doing this extremely kind thing, and he says it will bring him
connections so that he can have his paintings hung beside a Renoir and Degas.
And so it was. Now the son got addicted to absinth when he was 12, and he also
turned out to be a painter. His mother got him weaned off the absinth and
bribed him to paint with wine. If he painted a good painting she’d let him have
a drink.
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| Inside the Sacre Coeur |
Next stop was the last vineyard in
Monmartre. It was turned into a vineyard because that’s what it was anciently,
and the locals couldn’t bear to have an apartment building go up in its place,
but since it’s in the middle of a city with tons of pollution its terrible
wine, our guide says. He’s tried the rose and the blanche, and both awful. But
it is rare, because it’s such a tiny vineyard they only make 1000 bottles per
year, in a cellar under city hall, and all the profits go to charity.
Last stop was the Sacre Coeur where
we learned it is built of travertine stone, and that’s all I remember about
that part. Oh, wait, and St. Denis died there, and the locals donated money to
have it built because some bad things happened (I can’t remember what bad
things) but the locals thought maybe they weren’t being religious enough, and
they had turned their backs on God, so they decided to build a Cathedral on the
highest hill in Monmartre.
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| Band playing outside the cathedral |
I finally went inside the Sacre
Coeur this time since it wasn’t as crowded anymore. There’s these machines all
around where you can put money in to have a special touristy coin made. And for
2-4 Euros you can buy different types of candles to light and place in front of
your favorite saint. On each side of the door there’s holy water too, which a
lot of people dip their fingers into and cross themselves. Also note, the Sacre
Coeur doesn’t have a dress code, but if you go to Notre Dame, you can’t show
your shoulders. Interesting right? I don’t get why the dress code is different
at one Catholic Cathedral than the next.
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