THE WEEK CONTINUES

As I'm sure you recall we had had a very busy day but we wanted to go to Montmartre area and see Paris at night from a higher elevation. "Painters and poets, from Picasso to Apollinaire, put the "art " in Montmartre, and it will forever be remembered for their Bohemian lifestyles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries."  It is always a fun place to visit - although climbing the hill to the Sacre-Coeur is a bit daunting as you fight the crowds and wander through the vast number of souvenir shops.  It is almost a deterrent but one must go and see the area.  If it was good enough for Picasso, Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh , Renoir and Manet ,it's good enough for me too.  

After getting off the metro stop you take the Funiculaire to the top and that's where you start seeing the crowds.  Just for info, we bought a week metro card and the use of the Funiculaire was included. I also downloaded the Metro App and it makes manuevering the metro so easy.  (I have found if you go to "near me" on the App Store when you arrive in a city the most popular apps that are downloaded in the city appear.  Generally you will find a transportation app.)  

This search also provided a map of Paris which doesn't use data roaming.  Both have really made it easy to get around.  We feel so smart manuevering our way around Paris.

Souvenir walk way....

The Sacre-Coeur 

We escaped down the hill a bit and found a charming little Italian Restaurant.  We were looking for another one but our feet and knees were giving us trouble and the trip advisor reviews were good so we stopped.  The outside tables were filled but not to worry.  The owner just moved us down to the other  restaurant on the street and put a table and chairs in front of it.  Voila, we have outside seating.  He was charming and made some recommendations and then turned us over to a cute little waitress from Sweden who spoke great English.  We had so much in common, my Swedish heritage and we were both doing our gap year.  

After dinner we walked up to the Sacre-Coeur and waited for the sun to go down so we could get some great pictures of Paris at tnight.  Well that may have to wait.  We did stay until well past 10:30 but the lights just didn't seem to go on.  At least I thought it would be more spetacullar and it probably would have been had we stayed longer.

The view may not have been as great but the music and the energy were awsome.  There was a good  crowd and the singer and his group were great and other people from the audience came up to sing and they were great as well.  I wanted to volunteer to lend my voice to the night but Sharon insisted I stay with her so I missed my big opportunity to become famous. I'm almost certain it would have happened that night.  

Well, the night was young but we were old.  So we caught the subway home.  The station was pretty deserted - either we were too early, or too late.  (We had also over 18000 steps on the pedometer at this point.)

We weren't really too old but I had found a 4 hour walking tour on trip advisor which was highly recommended and I signed us up for Wednesday morning.  Wego walking tours here we come!

Update tomorrow...