Day 7 | Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, & Centre Pompidou

We started out on a rainy morning to visit the hilltop Sacre Coeur and Montmartre area. We had been in Paris an entire week and had yet to visit a crypt (!), so we thought our journey to Sacre Coeur was a perfect opportunity to do so.  Also, it was our actual 1 year anniversary, so there was truly nothing more romantic than touring a terrifyingly quiet and dark expanse under a gigantic church together. * 

It was drizzling and was a bit chilly, which made our crypt experience even more spooky.  I will say that, while there were many eerie statues and odd relic collections, most of the crypt featured tiny chapels with fragile, dusty chairs stacked in a corner.  It was so cave-like and quiet.  Outside, Sacre Coeur seemed to blend in with the hazy sky and contrasted against the trees that were still hanging on to their green leaves.

We ventured up and down the winding streets- it was amazing how different this area is compared to the other places we had been.

We were chilly and getting hungry, so we wandered a bit and then happened upon a gigantic crowd of people and the smell of something magical.  We peaked over the shoulders of the people waiting patiently for their food and discovered the most wonderful sausage sandwiches.  So, we joined the group and feasted.   They were spectacular!

Moulin Rouge is obviously the most famous of the 'moulins' found in Montrmartre, but there are actually a few that remain in tact. The one below is Le Moulin de la Galette, and it was so well hidden among trees and buildings that I almost didn't see it at first.

During the day, the Moulin Rouge just looks like a fairly normal building.  It's fun to stand in front of it and suddenly have all of the songs from Moulin Rouge get stuck in your head at once.  In the crosswalk area in front of the Moulin Rouge, there is a large circular air vent.  You can stand on it and your hair blows straight up over your head.  We watched a bunch of little kids play on top of it--- they would throw their hoodies up into the air and watch them as they stayed there.  It was adorable, and they shrieked and giggled and couldn't get enough of it, and everyone around them stopped to watch them have fun.  It was a nice little moment.

After our adventures in Montmartre, we headed to the Centre Pompidou, the contemporary art museum that was completed in the 1977 and, due to its modern and industrial design, the source of great controversy for many years.  Jason and I were both really looking forward to the floor featuring work by Duchamp, Man Ray, Rothko, and the photography galleries, but unfortunately, this entire floor was closed for re-hanging, so we weren't able to see any of those.  We toured the more contemporary exhibits and walked around the Beaubourg, the area surrounding the Pompidou. 

It was misty and dark and made everything seem a little bit quieter- definitely a great end to our day.

*Now, on our trip, we interacted with people from a million different places, all with varying levels of French and English, all just trying to find/ see/ eat/ drink something in the ever-lovely city of Paris. It took me a day or two to get back in the French-speaking mindset, and I was definitely not as quick as when I was in high school when I was pretending to order food or see a movie or go to the beach in a scenario fabricated by one or my teachers or a partner in class.  But I thought I was doing just fine, and I made sure that I never began a conversation or started to ask a question unless it was in French.  I spent a lot of time plotting out how to ask if something came in another color, or if we could get in using our pass, or if I had to pay to use the bathroom, or if we were standing in the correct line and hadn't just been swallowed into a group of high school students. I didn't really expect anyone to speak to me in English, and they usually didn't, unless, by some miracle, I had made it past three sentences in our conversation and it was obvious that I had exhausted my skill or that the other party had severely overestimated my grasp of conversational French. So, we approached the little ticket hut and I asked for two adult tickets to the crypt en français.  I was met with a confused look and "You have to tell me what you want.  I do not know what  you want!"  Well, my fair Crypt Troll, I have been asking for tickets, in French, for a slew of imaginary things since I was 14 years old to prepare for this exact moment and I'm pretty sure that I can intelligibly verbalize to you what I need. She remained unimpressed by my French skills, so I gave up, asked for two tickets in English, and waited for the receipt.  She then asked us, for survey purposes, where we were from, and when I said California, she was even more unhappy.  Maybe she thought I was saying something else the whole time?  What if I did?