By now, we are very familiar with the Paris Metro system. We hopped on the metro and headed out to montmartre. It was a more seedy part of the town, charming none the less. We climbed up toward the Sacre Coeure Basilica, and the view was spectacular. It was sunny and clear. We could see all the major sites in the city, from Eiffle tower to the montparnasse tower where our hotel is close by. The basilica itself is actually a fairly new structure built in the early 1900's. The rest of the morning we used Rick Steve's walking tour. This hill top village was once inhabited by artists that enjoyed the bohemian life style. We passed theirs houses, the cafe and restaurants that they used to frequent. Along the way, we saw Renoir's apartment, Picasso's studio, Le Bateau-Lavoir, and van Gogh's house. They are a very humble dwellings. For me, it's like a pilgrimage on this walking tour. To see how they lived and worked thier subjects into the paintings. Toulouse-Latrec's house is about 4 or 5 blocks from Moulin Rouge and also close by vanGogh. The streets were hilly, and some with cobble stones. At times you almost felt like you are back in time. Of all the original wind mills that were on the hill, only two remained. Moulin de la Galette is now a cafe, Renoir's painting of Bal du Moulin de la Galette in the Orsay sumed up the feeling duing the heyday of Montmartre.
We had crepes for lunch, it was a stand right next to the Moulin Rouge, at that stand we saw how French made their hot dog. They used a baguette and a stick to hollow out the center of the baguette, then a hot dog is stuffed into the hollow area and katchup and muster were injected in the there too. The whole baguette was toasted in an oven for a few minutes. I thought that was a great idea.
After the quick bite, we headed toward to Louvre. When we got out of the metro, we realized the station lead directly to the basement of the Louvre, where you see the upside down glass pyramid. Lots of people congregated around the pyramid area taking pictures. I think they all had the Da Vinci Code in their mind! We decided to go outside to check out the building first. On our way out, we saw the remains of the medieval foundations. The new structures were built on top of it. Once we surfaced, the first thing in to our sight is the pyramid in the court yard. Although some people criticized that pyramid does not fit with Louvre, I actually thought it is quite a nice fit. Trying to see the palace through the pyramid giving me a feeling of impressionism, like the paintings by Monet! As we turned around and we could see the arc de Triomphe standing tall on the other side of Champ-Elysees. It is really majestic from all angles. We entered the museum through the Pyramid. Everybody warned us not too be too ambitious at Louvre, so we had decided to just check out only the Denon wing to see the highlights. The first thing we saw was the "Winged Victory of Samothrace". It was placed in the end of a hallway, perched up high on top of stairs, so it was very visible from very far away, definitely a center piece right away. Then we turned right into the wing where they housed Mona Lisa, on the way, we saw Madonna of the Rocks, also by da vinci . The most famous painting in the world has its own room. I am surprised that they let people take pictures with flash. It was a small paingint. The lines were long to the front of it. Her enigmatic smile looked even more lifelike in close up. We saw the huge "Coronation of Napoleon", and "Liberty Leading the People", that's the painting with a bare breast woman waving French flag, I guess a lot of people has seen it somewhere before. We sat down on the rest area of the grand gallery for a while. I was trying to figure out where the curator was killed in the book, but I can't recall the detail, and I can't find any sign where a gate can be dropped from the ceiling. But we did see the famous parquet floor in the grand gallery. The last thing we wanted to see in the museum was the Venus de Milo statue. The ancient Greek floor was the basement, not as many visitors. So I could get up close to the statue. By this time, kids were really tired so we made our exits to the underground shopping area (Galerie du Carrousel) where May bought some perfumes and I got a few boxes of Maxim's sweets.
After leaving the Louvre, we walked to the Concord to visit Orangerie. May really wanted to see the big Monet's water lilies. Too bad we only had about 40 minutes before closing. I quite enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by one of the greatest impression artist's famous work, you almost feel like you are in the water lilies garden. Especially there were so few visitors! I ran out of time before I can went down to the gallery downstair. Looks like they have quite a few collections by other impression artists. I regretted a bit that we should have come here a bit early.
That night, we had a dinner reservation at a restaurant called Toustem, saw it on the Where magazine as it is the featured restaurant. It is a modern restaurant owned by a chef named
Helene Darroze. Its food was ok, the haut'e French, but the service was nice, one of the servers speak a little English so she explained the menu to us. I noticed that we were the only tourists that night. It was about dusk when we ate. It was early for Parisians. They typically have late dinners. The sun was about to set, and the light reflecting off the Nortre Dame and the river made the whole city shimmered. Very magical. And when we left, the whole latin quarter was busy with dinners and revelers. The later it got, the livelier the city became.
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