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Montmarte, France

None of the plug-in's in our room were working when we got up this morning.  To our dismay, we all left the room wet headed and cold, but decided to embrace the day anyway.  Me, with my hair that soon turned into a crazy mess of curls decided to stay around the Hostel and explore the neighborhood I've been living in for the past few days.  Every morning I have gotten up and headed straight to the subway, destination, the heart of Paris, but words from a dear friend convinced me to stay today and see what the fuss was all about.  I am so so so glad that I did.  Might have been one of my favorite mornings of the trip.

Montmarte is positioned on a large hill North of the city center.  It is one of Paris's older neighborhoods, with plenty of winding streets of cobble stone, shops, markets, and theaters.  This neighborhood was once home to many of the great artists, poets, and writers in history.  Picasso, Vlamenck, Derain, Soutine, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Hemmingway, they were all here at some point or another.  So much history, and it's so wonderful too.  I feel about it they way I feel about Inman Park in Atlanta.  My kind of place. 


My hostel is located at the bottom on the hill where Montmarte is settled.  They chairs are on my balcony that houses the door to my 4 bunk room.  I would really recommend this place.  It's called Le Villiage Hostel and so far it's been great.  The rooms are clean, the water is hot, and it's close to the subway.  They staff has been really nice about helping people find places they want to see.



The street I'm on is literally 100 fabric stores and discount clothing joints.  I have never seen so many different kinds of not very pretty fabric.  In the mornings big truck will come by the discount stores and drop off boxes of clothes and shoes from who knows where and the workers will through them in bins.  Soon after women run like the wind to be the first to dive head first into the bins and find their bargains.




Around the corner from the hostel you can see the Basilica Sacre-Coeur followed by tons and tons of tourist traps.  Every one of them selling the same thing, but yet people still get sucked in to buy crap that costs 10 euros or more.  I have been avoiding them like crazy.  





Up the street there are several museums housing the art Salvador Dali that I was dying to take a peak at.  Love love love me some Dali.  




This wall is wonderful.  LE MUR DES JE T'AIME (The Wall of I love Yous).  As said by the artist, In a world marked by violence and dominated by individualism, walls, like frontiers, are usually made to divide and to separate people and to protect them from one another. On the contrary, The Wall is a link, a place of reconciliation, a mirror which reflects an image of love and peace.






I grabbed a bit to eat at a little cafe.  This was my view.




So far this trip I have not paid for a single tourist attraction, including going to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Why pay for a view, when you have one like this in your backyard for free.  Just magnificent.  Tonight I might take a bottle of wine up to this spot and just be for a while.






At the very top of the hill  you will find many artists painting and selling their work.  Be care up here.  There are many people walking around trying to con you into buying a portrait of yourself.  They are very persistent  so unless you wish to pay 30 euros for a drawing, just keep shaking your head!



6 comments:

  1. UGH, Montmartre was seriously my favorite part of Paris. I'm so jealous that you're staying there! If you didn't make it to the top of the hill, I highly recommend it. There's a park with a carousel somewhere up there, if memory serves me well.

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  2. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
    That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
    And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
    And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
    The work of hunters is another thing:
    I have come after them and made repair
    Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
    But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
    To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
    No one has seen them made or heard them made,
    But at spring mending-time we find them there.
    I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
    And on a day we meet to walk the line
    And set the wall between us once again.
    We keep the wall between us as we go.
    To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
    And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
    We have to use a spell to make them balance:
    “Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
    We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
    Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
    One on a side. It comes to little more:
    There where it is we do not need the wall:
    He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
    My apple trees will never get across
    And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
    He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
    Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
    If I could put a notion in his head:
    “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
    Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
    Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
    What I was walling in or walling out,
    And to whom I was like to give offense.
    Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
    That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
    But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
    He said it for himself. I see him there,
    Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
    In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
    He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
    Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
    He will not go behind his father’s saying,
    And he likes having thought of it so well
    He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

    Beautiful captions! One of which reminds us of a poem by Robert Frost - thank you :)

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  3. I am so green with envy. That town is so adorably cute! And good for you for avoiding the tourist traps! I am not sure I could have avoided it LOL

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