Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Blue Sky Means Sacre Coeur

I really don’t like Montmartre, but I end up walking up there several times per trip because when the sky turns blue I get the urge to see if I can get “that really great picture” of Sacre Coeur, the beautiful lady who lives at the top of the mountain.

Today was such a day, so I set out.

Here are the main images from along the way.

The way I get there is to walk up Avenue de l’Opera to Galeries Lafayette, take the street alongside the rightmost building, past the Church of the Trinity and up rue Blanche and some other stuff.

To do all that I needed to cross Pont du Carousel.

That leads to Le Louvre.

paris 2016 view of la louvre from pont du carrousel 120616 00000

Today the gates to Le Louvre were locked; I have never seen that happen; so I walked down the Seine face of the Louvre; I had to take another picture – I have hundreds of them – of the lions in the iron work.

paris 2016 lion on the fence of la louvre 120616 00000

I snake my way through the Tuileries and start up rue des Pyramides past Joan of Arc which is in la place in front of Hotel Regina.

paris 2016 jean d'arc in front of hotel regina 120616 00000

Pyramides leads to Avenue de l’Opera which, of course, leads to l’Opera.

paris 2016 l'opera 120616 00000

Rue Blanche has only one redeeming characteristic: it gets me up to Le Moulin Rouge and rue de Clichy; a left turn down Clichy and a short walk leads to the entrance to Cemetaire de Montmartre and a stairway that leads to a bridge that crosses the cemetery and wends its way up the mountain to Sacre Coeur (there is also, just outside of the cemetery, a bistro that bills itself as a Gaelic pub; I have stopped there more than once, and it is really a nice place).

paris 2016 cemetaire de montmartre 120616 00000

Finally up on top the scene is deceptively quaint.

paris 2016 montmartre street scene 120616 00000

But then, after you walk through the detritus of the theme park, and down some flights of stairs the picture emerges.

paris 2016 sacre coeur 120616 00000

Then back down some street whose name I have never known to the Metro.

paris 2016 pigalle metro satation 120616 00000

Which led to Metro St Michel and, of course, Le Depart.

paris 2016 le depart st michel 120316 00000

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