Down at breakfast we planned out activities for the day. We took the metro to Montmarte. We walked through the back streets to the steps of Sacre Coeur. The steps looked more like a palace or a royal gardens than a church. We took countless photos as we walked the steps.
Dani brought out her own companion to match Malfi. Roger the cabin boy and Malfi became good friends. Into sacre coeur. And up the steps. We climbed the 300 steps to the spectacular view at the top. Dani recorded Josh and me climbed all the steps to make a video.
The view was worth the climb. You could see all of Paris from there. We played around with the video recordings. Josh took a video of the two of us climbing back down, but it didn't record properly.
Back on the ground we did a brief stroll of Montmarte. I remembered well the main square with all the artists. It was the same except for a mobile café set up in the centre. The restaurant killed the magic of the place a bit. I was felling quite hungry by then but tried to ignore it. We had only just eaten breakfast.
Dani had circled some museums in her book of things to do. The nearest to us was the Musee de erotisme. The erotica museum in the red light district of Pigalle. We found our way through winding streets and down the steps of Montmarte´s alleys to the main drag. There we saw the moulan rouge. I don't know if the sails are the original sail of the windmill. Either way its not as exciting as it seems. The show itself is extremely pricey, even just to sit at the bar. We looked at the photos they have outside to lure people in. didn't work I think, because we decided not to go. We thought maybe we could find a similar show if we had time.
The three off us were playing with the idea of a cold drink or a snack. We sat near by the Moulan rouge at a swanky cafe-bar called Le Chat Noir – the black cat. It´s theme was the original black cat nightclub in Paris. It had copies of the one well known poster of the same name stuck over the tables and walls. We sat outside and looked at a menu. nothing on it excited us terribly so we left to the nearby erotica museum.
It started out with glass cases displaying tribal phallic and gynicocentric art. The next level was more interesting. There was porn from the pre-sound era. The silent movie dialogue screens were priceless. I was standing watching turn of the century porn when my gran called on my mobile.
I was a tad thrown of how to tell her I was watching very old and quite explicit sex videos. ¨Oh hi gran. Where am I? I´m at a museum. It´s lovely¨.
I probably could have just told her where I was, but in the moment it just seemed awkward.
The next floor was about brothels in Paris. Then a few floors of a Japanese erotica exhibition. a lot of violence depicted in photos and paint. Lots of bondage and rape scenes.
We were hungry after the museum. Dani had a particular patisserie she wanted to try. We walked down to where to was but it was gone. So we found the next nice looking place and bought quiche. The street was lined with fruit and pastry shops. We sat on the steps of a church (a smaller Notre Dame I think?) to eat the quiche.
We took the metro to the Pompadou, the centre of modern art. It is an awesome place with all its internal organs on the outside. The piping is all colour coded. Red pipes for, green for, blue for water and white for. Turns out it was closed that day. So we got ice cream. Kind of makes sense.
The place we went to in front of the gallery had this gelato specialty. It took two or three flavours and created a flower. The middle flavour was the pollen, with thin slithers of the other around it to create a kind of ice cream rose. And huge servings. We sat in the square to gorge ourselves on ice cream. We watched the people.
The walk to the museum D´orsay didn't look so long so we used it as a back up plan. On the way we hit the Notre Dame cathedral. Nice church with a pretty exterior. We didn't stay too long.
We made our way to the Louvre and took photos of the glass pyramids. We didn't plan to go inside. We had already been in the last time we were in Paris to see the Mona Lisa. There wasn´t much else there we wanted to see. The three of us are far more interested in modern and contemporary art.
We reached the D´orsay only to find an enormous queue. There were only 2 more hours before it closed and at least 30 mins of it would be used getting in. I really wanted to spend longer looking around in there. It was one of my favourite museums. So we would do both museums the next day.
By then our feet were killing and we were getting hungry. We took the metro back to the hostel. We sat at the bar with pints of cider and Ozymandias. It was a good relax after a busy day. Then we set out to dinner.
We sat down at a trendy looking place down the road. Bit too trendy it turns out. A meal was 3 times what we wanted to spend. So we got up and tried another place near by. We ordered Anise aperitif and we were bought some kind of rose. then told they didn't do couscous (the majority of their menu) on weekdays. we were put out. So we drank our rose drinks, paid and left. The third place we sat at was Japanese. By then we had given up on traditional French and just wanted somewhere we could eat. It didn't have anything for vegetarians. So we got up and left. We decided to be sure about the next place BEFORE we sat down.
The fourth was a modest misc asian place. The prices were good and they served us free rose aperitif with prawn crackers when we sat. So we happily ate there. They had a screen playing French language Batman Begins in the corner of the room. All tasty food and good value.
We walked back despite painful feet. We caught the end of Fight Club in the downstairs chill out room. Then to bed.
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