Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
Find me on Facebook 2012
Paris Journal ← Previous Next
→ Back to the Beginning
|
Montmartre has a
perpetually split personality. On any
given day, some streets are calm, quiet, and peaceful – almost as if they
were in some small hillside village where few people own cars. At the same time, not far
away, sometimes just around the corner, there are streets full of chaos,
packed with people, some of whom are behaving strangely. Within the same space, some people move
frenetically, some slowly, as they take in the sights and sounds of a crazy
place. In July and August, we
always take the metro to Lamarck Caulaincourt (not to Abbesses) when we go to
Montmartre. That way is easy; when we
exit the metro station, we simply turn around and begin to climb the
hill. This is a calm, peaceful area;
we call it the “back side of the hill,” a.k.a. the north side. First Tom wanted to visit
the Villa Leandre, a cul-de-sac of townhouses which are mostly single-family
homes – a rare type of housing in central Paris. Tom says this street
doesn’t look Parisian. I suppose he’s
right; the owner of number 10 Villa Leandre seems to agree. He has a little plaque by his front door
that says “10 Downing Street, Westminster.”
Yes, it does look more like a street you’d find in an English city. We followed the avenue
Junot around and ended up on the rue Norvins where we continued to climb
until we noticed a tiny park we’d never noticed before: Jardin Frédéric Dard, named for a writer
also known as San Antonio (1921-2000).
Under this nom-de-plume,
Dard wrote popular crime novels – 173 of them. A dusty and weedy little
place, it nevertheless is welcoming, with three park benches in a small
cleared area amidst mature trees. The
little park does not show up at all in my copy of L’Indispensable, the book of maps that shows every tiny street
and park. I think it is a relatively
new park, even though it looks like it has already been neglected for a few
decades. Two of the three benches
were occupied. On the one nearest to
the bench we took were three French-speaking women huddled over an iPad. They asked Tom to take their photo with it,
which he did. After a short rest, we
walked on to the chaotic place where the rue Norvins ends – the Place du
Tertre. Just about every tourist who visits
Montmartre sees this square, which is packed with little restaurants and
artists who want to paint or draw your portrait, for money. We slowly made our way
through the crowd on one side of the Place du Tertre until we reached the
Place du Calvaire. On the corner of
the rue du Calvaire and the two Places was a group of Gypsy girls working one
of their scams. They were especially
targeting tourists who were climbing the stairs of the rue du Calvaire,
trying to get to the Place du Tertre. We were coming from the
other direction, but one of the scammers approached me. I waved her off as if she were a pesky
mosquito. I stepped into the serene
Place du Calvaire, where an aging musician played a bass which he was
amplifying through a machine that played tracks. He was playing old Beatles tunes, like “Hey
Jude” and “A Little Help from my Friends” at an extraordinarily slow
tempo. The effect was almost hypnotic. I liked it better than Tom did. It must have been painful for a drummer to
hear a tempo that slow. Stepping back out onto the
rue du Calvaire again, I noticed that one tourist was being taken in by the
scammers. She had her purse open, and
was about to give one of them some money.
Another one stood by and made note of where the woman kept her
money. Somebody soon would no doubt
try to pick the wallet out of her purse. This really bothered
me. I stood and stared. I had my camera in hand. I took a photo. One of the scammers came up to me, and I
just glared at her. I gave her a good
long stare of disapproval. I did not
look away. She tried to stare back at
me, but she couldn’t maintain it. Tom
says this look on my face is truly frightening. I don’t know; I’ve never done it while
looking at a mirror. That’s what I felt,
however: intense disapproval. I thought this woman who was scammed looked
like someone who could be one of my friends from Florida; someone on her
first trip to Paris. I didn’t like
having her experience this “underground aspect of Paris,” as our Sanibel
police chief Bill Tomlinson described it when he visited Paris and stayed in
a not-so-great neighborhood. The scammer walked away
from me and we continued on, ambling, back through two other sides of the
crowded Place du Tertre. When we came
out the other side, on the rue du Mont Cenis, I said to Tom, “Why don’t I see
any police? Not even any undercover
police?” (They’re easy to spot,
somehow.) Tom said, “How about
that!” He gestured to our left. There, as if on cue, were three soldiers in
camouflage uniforms and berets, carrying automatic weapons, pointed
downward. They strolled calmly into
the crowd in the Place du Tertre.
Perhaps they were headed toward the scammers at the far corner, we
thought. We turned and entered the
courtyard of the old church of Saint Pierre.
The church was open! Usually it
is not. I think we saw this church
many years ago, but had not been able to visit it since because it wasn’t
open when we were there. But this was a weekday, and
the middle of the day, when the church was open. We went inside. Saint-Pierre de Montmartre
is the truly historic church on that hill; much more so than the 19th
century Sacre Cœur, which can be seen from afar. Folklore says that this
church of Saint Peter was started by Saint Denis in the third century. Maybe that’s true, but what we know is that
there was a Merovingian church on the site in the 6th and 7th
centuries, and that in the 9th century, pilgrims on the way to the
basilica of Saint Denis would stop at this church. In
Gallo Roman times, Montmartre was named Mons
Martis (Mount of Mars) and there was a temple to Mars on the site that
would become this church of Saint Peter.
“Montmartre” is a later, Christianized name, referring to the
martyrdom of Saint Denis. In
the 12th century, Louis VI started a Benedictine abbey at this
church, causing the church to be rebuilt. But
in the 17th century, the Benedictines moved downhill. Then the church was destroyed in the French
Revolution. So what we saw yesterday
was a church that was restored in the 19th century. However, there are some Roman columns
remaining in the nave. Upon
exiting, I crossed the courtyard to a little building that the priest
evidently uses as an office. Posted on
the window there was a newsletter with a very nice message from the priest
for his parishoners, advising them to take advantage of vacation time as a
way to refresh one’s spirit. Ah
yes. So
we wandered on, circling around to take in the sweeping view of Paris from
the front side of the hill. Looking down,
I saw a number of illegal vendors selling trinkets on the terrace that is
part of the grand stairway leading to Sacre Cœur. These
guys have ingeniously attached cords to the corners and sides of the blankets
on which they spread out their trinkets.
When they receive word that the cops are coming, they pull on two
cords and the blanket becomes a sack that is holding all their trinkets. This
happened as we were watching. One by
one, they vendors pulled the cords, and then walked together off to the side
of the stairway, to a tree-lined nook, where they stood around and waited for
the threat to pass. We
went on to the public restroom. When I
exited the restroom, Tom told me that not only had the police just driven by,
but some soldiers had been there, too, trying to catch the illegal vendors in
the act of selling their illegally imported trinkets. The
illegal vendors are on the run. They
are still out there on the streets of Paris, but they are being hunted by the
authorities, and they are wary. We
continued our wanderings around the back side of the hill, to the Parc de la
Turlure, also called the Parc Marcel-Bleustein-Blanchet since 1988. This is the site of a former mill owned by
nuns called the Sisters of the Cénacle.
It is one of the many peaceful, calm places on Montmartre. It has somewhat formal terraces, with a
great arbor of thickly woven wisteria vines that shelters a row of nooks
lined with stone benches – a good place to enjoy your brown-bag lunch on a
hot day. We
rested and watched a couple of Asian tourists. One photographed the other as she practiced
some graceful Yoga moves on a patch of grass beneath the mature trees. We
walked on along the quiet rue Saint Vincent on the back side of the hill, and
paused in front of Lapin Agile to take a few photos of that old hangout for writers and artists. From
there, it was easy to find our way back to the rue Caulaincourt and the rue
Lamarck, where the metro station opened into the side of the hill to receive
us. We
remembered, on the way back, that it was easier to change to the line 8 at
Madeleine than at Concorde, and so we did.
We took it easy for the rest of the afternoon in the apartment, as the
skies threatened to rain a little. Then
it was time for dinner. I had reserved
a table for us at l’Alchimie, which is a fine place to dine as long as there
is no need for air conditioning. The
temperatures were in the 70s yesterday, so we were very comfortable as we
dined on creative, colorful, delicious courses. We
were greeted and given the best table, in the front window, and proceeded
with a big bottle of Badoit and a mis
en bouche of crab dip with strips of toast. Lovely. We
shared a starter course of tender encornets
(slices of squid), prepared Provençale style with plenty of butter and finely
diced, cooked vegetables. I
could not resist ordering the duckling breast in ginger sauce with roasted
radishes again, so I did. Tom had the
great pork chop with its gourmet salad that includes pine nuts. He
had a café gourmand for dessert – a
perfect way to end a delightful dinner. We
feel very welcome there at l’Alchimie, where we seem to be the token English
speakers. So far, when we’ve been
there, everyone else in the resto was speaking French. The check arrived in a tiny
yellow bucket – un seau. And so – life in Paris goes on, even if it
is crazy at times (un sot). |
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Looking
through a gate to someone’s garden near the Jardin Frédéric Dard I captured this
scene, which looks like a country lane.
Very rural in appearance, but in reality, near the center of things on
Montmartre.
From
the rue Norvins, looking toward the Place du Tertre, where the chaos begins.
Musician
playing on the Place du Calvaire.
A
woman being scammed by Gypsies on the rue du Calvaire.
Armed
soldiers begin to make their way through the crowd on the Place du Tertre.
L’Eglise
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre.
This
pigeon may have visions of grandeur as he eyes the little Eiffel Tower in the
distance from his perch on a Montmartre TV antenna.
A
sweeping view and illegal vendors, who are just starting to pull up their
trinkets and vacate the scene before police arrive.
Au
Lapin Agile still has cabaret shows in the evenings. |
