In July, on my way to Amsterdam, I decided to visit Paris again to see the fireworks for Bastille Day, take a tour of Versailles (which I missed the last time I was there), and visit my friend Annie who lives in Paris with her husband.
MY HOTEL
I got a great deal on my hotel. It was in Bercy in the building connected to the train station Gare de Lyon so all I had to do was walk out and go back in through another door. For less than a hundred euros I got a room that would normally cost over 300. I even had my own mini-fridge and espresso machine! Oooh!
L'HÔTEL DE VILLE
I had heard that a really cool exhibition had been built in front of the Hôtel de Ville (not a hotel - basically the city hall). Luckily it was the last day of the exhibit and I was able to experience it before they tore it down after the holiday. It was called L'Anamorhpose. It was a strange three dimensional garden that while unintelligible from ground level metamorphosed into a globe with trees growing out of it when seen from a small grandstand:
Doesn't look like much does it! Just wait . . .
Here's some geezer looking through the crosshairs.
This is what it looks like through the crosshairs. Pretty cool, huh?
MONTMARTRE
Since I wasn't meeting Annie until the next evening and I had some time to kill before the fireworks I decided to go to Montmartre which is the higher northern district of Paris where a huge hill stands housing the Sacré Cœur cathedral. Montmartre originally was full of windmills, but after development it became the nightclub hangout of famous artists like Picasso (think the Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir) and then a dangerous den of Parisian gangsters by the 1950s. Today it's like Little Africa. I walked out of the metro station and felt like I was in a Timbuktu market. Unfortunately, I didn't go in the cathedral it was so packed but I got some great pictures. At Sacré Cœur you have to watch out though because people will come up and quickly tie a string around your wrist and then demand money for it. I dodged them, got the pics I wanted, and headed downtown for the fireworks.
Steps up la Butte (what they call the hill)
Views of Sacré Cœur
Views of Paris from la Butte.
THE FIREWORKS
The crowds kept me from seeing a lot of fireworks but I did see some. It was actually a big scandal the next day because they played American music and people were outraged that French music was not used on their "Fourth of July."
Stay tuned for my visit to the Palace of Versailles and my trip to Amsterdam.
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment