Passing through Montmartre

It's about 5 km (3.1 miles) from the Marché aux Puces flea market back to our hotel and we decide to walk in order to see the back side of Montmartre.  We've been reading that this is a great area to explore and visit, very different from the heavy-touristic area near the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and the Place du Tertre on the top of the hill.

Leaving the market, we find ourselves walking through narrow streets heading up, guiding ourselves by periodic views of the Basilica.

 Streets of Montmartre

 Heading up

And, finally on the top, we find the crowds!  The Place de la Tertres square is full of artists painting, sketching portraits, and selling their creations.  We stop and watch a few portraits in process.

 Place de la Tertres near Sacré-Cœur

 And, around the corner, the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, itself.  Sacré-Cœur is located at the highest point in Paris, started in 1875 and completed in 1914, and can be seen from all over the city.

 Views of Sacré-Cœur

Views across Paris from Sacré-Cœur

We head down the steps from the Basilica and start to wind our way back through the city to our hotel, passing the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret on the way, then, later, through Parc Monceau, near our hotel, with everyone out on the beautiful spring day.

 Moulin Rouge

 Spring day in the park

We've had a lot of variety today and look forward to even more tomorrow.

More Monet and Flea Markets

We wake up on our second full day in Paris to a beautiful spring day.  The sun is out, the leaves are starting to show on the trees, and we decide to celebrate the season by viewing the Jardins (Gardens) exhibition at the Grand Palais, the huge exhibition hall on the Champs-Élysées.  However, we don't take into account that it is Saturday and the residents of Paris are out and about for the weekend and many have already purchased tickets in advance for the show.  We walk over to the Grand Palais, get in the line for people without tickets and, in a short while, hear that it will be 1.5-2 hours before we can get in.

We decide to come back on Monday, when people are back at work, and head down the street to the nearby Musée de l'Orangerie, to check out the line there.  L'Orangerie is in the Tuilleries, the fabulous public gardens between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, and our EuroStar ticket to Paris is supposed to get us a two-for-one ticket price.  When we arrive, we find no line and that we can buy a discounted combination ticket for both the l'Orangerie and the Musee d'Orsay, across the river.  This is great!  The Musée d'Orsay always has long lines, but with a ticket in hand, we can bypass the lines and head right in at a later time.  The attendant who takes our l'Orangerie ticket draws a small heart on the ticket (we must look like we're having fun) and tells us that, when we're ready, go to Door C at Musée d'Orsay for our expedited entrance.

But, meanwhile, l'Orangerie, in addition to its two large rooms of Monet Water Lilies, is featuring an exhibition (that didn't show on our list) of the collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume, described as one of the finest European collections of paintings, with 146 works from the 1860s to the 1930s, from impressionism to modern art.

We wander, starting with the rooms of Water Lilies.

 Water Lilies!

And, then, through some of the collection.

 Works from the collection

But, after that, we must return for some more admiring and appreciating the water lilies.

They call us back

We finally have our fill and head back out into the beautiful spring day.  What to do next?  How about shopping at the flea/antique market, the Paris Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen, considered to be the largest flea market in the world with over 3,000 traders organized into a series of open-air and covered villages.  If you're looking for anything, you can probably find it here!

 Alleyways of the Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen

We're searching for a silver appetizer holder and find several in the shops.  While we discuss our negotiation strategy, we stop for lunch at a stand in the market and have two paninis (four-cheese and ham/cheese) and two glasses of wine.

 Lunch at the market

Fortified, we wander some more, head back to the shop with the most interesting offering and start to negotiate.  The item is marked at 140 euros and we eventually end up with it for 90 after a fun discussion with the vendor.

First Full Day in Paris: Monet and Wandering

Before we leave for Paris, we check to see what exhibitions are currently showing at the museums and spot several that sound interesting:

   Camille Pissaro, The First of the Impressionists at Musée Marmottan Monet
   Jardins (Gardens) at the Grand Palais
   Rodin:  The Centennial at the Grand Palais
   Pisarro in Éragny:  Nature Regained at the Musée du Luxembourg
   Beyond the Stars, The Mystical Landscape from Monet to Kandinsky at Musée d'Orsay

We can't take them all in, but we'll wander, see where the lines are short, and catch as much as we can.

Our first full day, we decide to walk over to one of our favorite small museums, Musée Marmottan Monet, originally a hunting lodge, purchased by the Marmottan family in 1882 and donated to the Académie  des Beaus Arts and opened as a museum in 1934.  The works focus on Monet, but there are often truly interesting exhibitions filling other rooms.  In this case, extensive works of Camille Pissaro, friend of Monet and one of the first impressionists.  Photography was discouraged in the exhibition, so we'll move quickly through it and head downstairs to the works of Monet, particularly some of the impressive Water Lilies.

Works of Monet!

After our first dose of impressionist pieces, we walk in the light rain back toward the Avenue des Champs-Élysée to find the crowds and lunch, passing a good view of the Eiffel Tower at Place du Trocadéro, across the river.

Eiffel Tower in the rain

On the Champs-Élysée, we stick our head into several car showrooms for delightful views of old vehicles and new concept cars, small museums unto themselves.

 Cars on display

For lunch, we're thinking mussels, and continue down the street to Léon de Bruxelles (Leon of Brussels), originally founded in Brussels in 1893, where we share a traditional Moule Marinière, mussels cooked in white wine, cream, garlic, and parsley, along with frites and two small light Belgium beers.

Moules, frites, and beer for lunch

All we need to round out our first day in Paris is some shopping and we head over to the department stores on Boulevard Haussmann to see what's in season.  The stores are busy changing their displays and contents from winter to spring and there are good sales everywhere.  We capture a few of the spring windows at Printemps as they first appear (Gallerie Lafayette windows are covered for the transition, we'll be back in a few days to see what they have to show).

 Windows at Printemps starting to show spring

We've covered a lot of territory in our first full day and it's time to head back to the hotel and contemplate where to head next.