Montmartre

8 mai

Today I went to Montmartre!  I rode the funicular up the hill to Sacre Coeur since it was free with my Paris metro pass.  It reminded me of taking the funicular up the mountain to the castle in Salzburg last summer.  Montmartre is such a unique part of Paris.  It is the highest point in Paris and has such a great view of the city.  I toured around Montmartre and saw a lot of the places where artists lived back in the day.

All these painters in the square reminded me of the I Love Lucy episode where she is in France and thinks that she is discovering this young painter and buying this incredibly original picture and then finds out that all her friends bought that same picture that day :)

Montmartre used to be a huge vineyard but this small section is all that remains.

I walked through this cute playground area.  French kids are the cutest and I love listening to them talk.

Van Gogh lived here for a time.

After Montmartre, I went back into central Paris and toured the area north of the Louvre.  I saw some famous theatres, the Grand Palais, and the Grand Palais gardens.

The French stock exchange

Then I went through these covered passageways that were lined with cute boutiques and restaurants.  

Emily and I ate dinner with our host family tonight! It is always a fun adventure.  It really is helping me to improve my French.  I think it must be a French culture thing or it could just be this family, but they love to argue about anything and everything.  They all give their input and opinion on every little detail of proceedings.  They're awesome though.  I love asking them questions and hearing their perspective on things.  We talked a lot about the France presidential election results and what it will mean for the country in the future.  They are very worried about Hollande being president because he will legalize gay marriage, abortion, and adoption by gay couples.  They are also mad that a lot of people voted for Hollande not being aware of his platform, but just voting against Sarkozy.  There were a lot of people in the election that just turned in a blank ballot which is odd and unheard of in the US.