So Much to See

Forty days, we thought, would be enough time for us to develop a “local” feel for Paris.  
Bah-haha! In the next few posts, I will share our 40-day dose of Paris.

We walked it.

Except for not having to pack and unpack every few days, our time here has been quite touristy, filled with a must-see or a to-do almost every day. 
While we have walked independently all over this city, and it is very walkable, we have taken four organized walking tours.  Rather than admiring a building’s architecture or the flowers blooming on the windowbox, or stopping to read a plaque on a monument, and taking a photo, a tour led by a knowledgeable guide fills in the gap,s giving meaning to the sight. A guide can often add interesting anecdotes about the person immortalized in a stone monument, or give the scoop on a strikingly beautiful building. The guides always know who lived there and when, the time the building was first built, and how many times it has been rebuilt, or even add such personal notes as to which resident was a drinker and who openly had many live-in lovers. Paris guides especially love a chance to point out where guillotines were used.  Walking tours are the way to go to get to know a city in 2 hours. 
Our first tour focused on the highlights of Paris, starting at the Arc de Triomphe, from there we covered all the important spots along Champs-Élysées and ended at the Tuileries Garden and the glass pyramid at the Louvre.

We did two tours through Montmartre, once a farmland area just east of Paris dotted with windmills. Later, farmland gave way to more and more people seeking a cheap place to live. Because of its cheap but dirty living, Montmartre became a welcoming place for those with revolutionary attitudes and artistic tendencies. Aspiring artists like Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Renoir, eighteenth-century writers and musicians, and many more imaginative, but soul-searching and penniless Bohemians, lived there. As more people moved to the country, the need for farmland windmills diminished. With so many new people in the area, some clever owners turned the useless windmills into rowdy drinking spots. The French word “moulin” translates to windmill.  The bawdy can-can was first performed in one of those roudy drinking places after it was painted red. This place is here today and is known as the speakeasy, La Moulin Rouge.

The most famous spot in Montmartre is Sacré-Cœur, the huge white church built on the highest point in Paris.  It was built there after the French Revolution, when the Aristocrats and Revolutionaries were still at odds.  Further, France was in a state of humiliation.  Not only had France been defeated by Northern Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, but their leader, Napoleon III, had been captured.  Both groups blamed the other for the defeat.   A prominent Catholic bishop proposed a stupendous church standing tall overlooking Paris with spires reaching toward heaven.  The sacred church would be dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Christ and, more importantly, serve as a political distraction to reduce animosity between the rich and the poor who still hated each other and further, blamed each other for France’s defeat. It worked, but guess who ultimately paid for it.
We walked through the Latin Quarter. It lies next door to Notre Dame and is home to the Sorbonne, one of the finest universities in the world, the Pantheon (where the bones of many of France’s royalty lie), and a popular vintage clothing store that sells clean, gently used clothing priced by the kilo. 

In our last walking tour, we went through St. Germaine, where Simone Boulivar hung out drinking and partying while writing her essays on what are now considered some of the first statements declaring women’s rights.

By the way, the Latin Quarter of Paris is not just a part of town where people of Spanish heritage live. The first universities in Paris taught students in Latin. In and around the Sorbonne, teachers and students often spoke Latin. People heard that strange language and began to refer to the area as the place where they speak Latin.

Next up: So Many Churches