Monday, November 17, 2008

Montmartre

Montmartre is the artists district in which we live. I really love it, despite homeless people drinking and hanging around almost every street corner. We have our bakery with delicious bread and baguettes, fromangery and lots of ateliers and boutiques. They have really nice stuff there. When I am mad because of constantly wet pavement or stinky guys in the underground I go to see nice places around. There is a cemetery where i.e. Slowacki is berried or Zola. It is interesting because if you walk through the avenues of this cemetery you can see really original graves. There is a grave with football in it or graves with really nice sculptures. Of course Montmartre is all about the fun and rarely people manage to get to the cemetery You have nice restaurants everywhere, not every restaurant is horribly expensive Also There is a secession church and the oldest underground station in Paris called Abesses. Near the station you can always hear someone playing guitar or singing or watch group of students playing lively music. Of course each performance is happily better than the one you can experience in the underground. Seriously I feel like someone would punish me for getting into the same compartment of a train as the so called artist. I am using tube to go to Uni every day and by now I can list you great artists of the underground: there are two ladies who think they can sing, one is singing in Italian the other in French both suck so horribly that you have to volume up your ipod, which not always helps if they choose to sing opera. There are also about 3 guys playing accordion, who are no better than the great lady singers. I thought I will never be more irritated by so called artists than by the guy playing bagpipes in Oxford, where I use to live, but this guys are irritating on more less the same level. So again underground is the worst course of this city. You pay horrible amount of money for your ticket, you are stuck in tiny train and have 90% chances to hear performance that gives you the cribs. Brrr

Coming back to nice places, the most beautiful one is Sacre coeur. It’s the cathedral on a hill. The cathedral itself is marvellous and since it’s on a hill you can see whole Paris. Actually now I think this is the place where most French people hang out. Under Eiffel tower you can meet only tourists and here there is always someone playing music, crowd singing, someone celebrating b-day and few tourists in between. If you get the chance to see Paris then you have to pop in here. If not then you can pretend that you’ve been there and see the photos.