Montmartre

This was my second time up to the most northern arrondissement of Paris, but my first doing the royal Amélie sight-seeing tour. Not the formal one of course, just me & Kelly & my guidebook taking us around to the little sights. We started right out of the [very underground] metro & all the way up the hundreds of stairs to Sacre Coeur.

Finally at the top... the view down & my favorite scene from Amélie - the chase down the path!

It had been drizzling for most of the day, so the usual musicians and surrounding crowd weren't there, but still lots of people lounging around. If you go straight down the stairs, take a right at the base of the hill, go past Abessess metro, and left on rue Lepic, you arrive directly at the Amélie cafe! I'm so used to sites in LA being advertised & flashy that we walked past it before I realized we had gone too far down the street. There was nothing particularly special about it, & it looked like the normal customers having a coffee outside weren't as excited as I was to be there. The menu wasn't too wonderful, so I just took a peek inside and then went down the street for dinner.

Kelly & I also wanted to stop by a Dalí exhibition that is advertised in almost every metro stop here, so we found the little gallery space and paid the 6 euros to see what ended up being the strangest exhibit I've ever seen. Most of the works were prints of his drawings, & then there were a bunch of dresses scattered around, which were evidently designed by the likes of Sonya Rykiel, Phoebe Philo, & some other big names, as influenced by Dalí's work. I suppose it could have been interesting, but it wasn't really what I signed up for.

There was also this space where you could sit and watch one of Dalí's weird short films, my favorite part. I didn't recognize the one that they were playing, but it was much different than Un chien andalou, so that was interesting to see. I think next time the artist's square and a picnic with all the liberals in Paris is going to be enough Montmartre for me!