So where did you go next, I hear you all clamoring inside the quietude of your own craniums, on that crazy day in Paris that wore you out so badly, Mr. Browne?
Why, we went to Le Sacre Coeur, thanks so much for asking… and no, don’t bother trying to pronounce it… even the French can’t do that.
Sacre Coeur is a lovely little church perched on a hill above the city of Paris. You might remember it from some of my earlier Paris posts, hovering off in the distance. I have been there once before, and I thought I might actually make it inside this time…
By now it was midafternoon, and all the walking and the heat were really starting to get to me…
But the thing is… hey, we haven’t had a ‘thing’ in this series yet… that down there at the bottom of all those steps, is Montmartre… a famous shopping district… and my wife and kid were all over that like perfume on a French hooker… I mean… uh… so to speak…
On the way down all those stairs… which we would have to walk back up later… we saw this guy. You should Google him. He is all over U-tube. I have never seen anybody do the stuff he does with a soccer ball… or football, to be correct in the European sense.
This is just the grand finale of his act. He didn’t do all of it hanging twenty feet in the air. Most of the time he was just balancing on a narrow balustrade. Seriously… Google him. Anyway, we left my over-ninety-year-old mom sitting on the steps watching him and off we went…
Down many, many steps…
I have to admit, I do like Montmartre. I was here about ten years ago with my older daughter… there are posts about that trip way down in my blog somewhere… and this is where I first learned about the chocolate and banana crepes.
This is not shopping like on the Champs de Elysee… which we will get to in a little while… sigh… This is like cheap souvenir stores and cute, artsy little shops and all kinds of weird stuff. It is really a fascinating neighborhood.
And if I wasn’t such a classy guy, I totally would have bought that shirt.
After another hour or two of walking around, we had to trudge back up all those stairs.
By this point, I don’t think I was smiling all the time anymore in between the silly selfies.
Pouring My Art Out 
I personally hate the Sacré-Coeur ( not diificult to pronounce if you don’t try to read, just ask a Frenchman to say it : sa-cray-cur ) . I only love Roman and Gothic churches, and this thing looks lije a huge cream cake to me, but above all it’s the meaning of it that I loathe . It was built by from a will of the very upper class and the nefarious religious hierarchy, offically to “expy the crimes” of the Commune of Paris (1871), the worldwide first Socialist revolution who scared the rich classes so much all around Europe that the recent Prussian victors allied with the French bourgeoisie settled in Versailles to massacre like soulless beasts the revolting Parisians. Montmartre had been all along the XIXth century a craddle of popular resistance . So I hate this pastry that disfigures Montmartre . You can see on a wall of the Père-Lachaise cemetery a plate telling a mass of the last “Communards” were executed there . ( By the way, visiting the Père-Lachaise is a rich idea . Many famous people are buried there, they give maps, and many tombs are spectacular . There is also Saint-Denis cathedral in the suburban Saint-Denis just North of Montmartre which is the place were nearly all French kings are buried ) .
I had good times in Montmartre, but for that one needs to absolutely avoid any place related to tourism, that means exploring little basic streets and going down along the Eastern anf Northern slopes, not the one leading to Pigalle . As a general rule everywhere, but much more in Paris, touristic places are those where you’ll find the most rotten relationships and never find the potential real beauty of one people .
Now I am glad I didn’t go inside… thanks…
But, but, but, Sacré Cœur is so pretty. Doesn’t it get points for pretty? I mean really, history shmistory – pretty rules. 😀
I don’t find it beautiful, too artificial . It really makes me think of a gigantic pastry . And it’s far too recent to bear a soul .
And yet the hearts and souls and skills of so many artisans went into its construction. Do their souls and the work of their lives count less than the souls of the rich who funded it?
In the late XIXth people had no more this childish and absolute faith of the Middle Age . Too many class hate too . And the knowledge that permitted Roman and Gothic cathedrals to be built was lost or hidden . It was a combination of Druidic secrets and the magnificent science of Solomon’s Temple builders completed by sophisticated skills of Orient brought back by the Knight Templars from the Crusades and taught to the first Free Masons . This, this makes me feel something high . No this Dusneyland set .
Pardon me, I even don’t feel a thing for Spanish or Italian churches, I find them overloaded, too much gold, roccoco, no real spirituality and secret knowledge . Same for castles . I”m not attracted by the Loire Renaissance castles, nor Versailles . In France I only love Middle Age fortresses, and the strongest of all are the Cathars “vertigo citadels”, on top of Pyrenean cliffs .
I just try to see the beauty around me wherever I go.
hmmmmmmm
It isn’t that new by American standards… ha
Bad stuff happened almost everywhere…
I think I have been to Paris about six times…. I can relate. To everything.
Hell, I think I tried to get married there once…. I was sans success….mon deu!
http://texantales.com/2014/05/24/goin-to-the-chapel/
That is a heck of a story.
Beautiful church, but too damn many tourists, for my liking. If you had bought that shirt, perhaps you could have scared some of the tourists away.
I have a shirt that says; Hitler’s 1939 European Tour… with him saluting… and a map with red lines pointing into France… like a concert tour shirt… that would have done the trick… (I never have had the nerve to wear it… still in the package)
That would have made a big splash, I’m sure. Especially at the Arc de Triomphe.
I don’t even wear it here… in America… where people don’t know history… or geography…
You could have risked a legal problem . French law forbids any public apology of Nazism or racism . I guess wearing a portrait of the leader of the worst collective monstrosity of recent history should constitute a legal offense .
It isn’t pro-Nazi