Jour Trois

BEDFORD ROAD: Day three was all about Montmartre, the neighbourhood famous for its artists and most recently for its appearance in the film's Amelie and Moulin Rouge. Being massive fans of guided walking tours we decided to go with Paris walks. Along with a handful of Welsh (over for the Six Nations), a family of San Franciscans, an Indian student based in London and a handful of others, a Cornish expat pointed out various locations associated with Impressionists and Post-Impressionists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Utrillo. We finished at the foot of the sandcastle cathedral Sacre Couer. The views of Paris would have been stunning, if the entire city hadn't been dressed in a London-esque coat of drizzle.






After picking up a couple of excellent ham and cheese baguettes we crossed town to the Musee d'Orsay. Following the trend to build art galleries in converted industrial sites, the museum expertly utilises it's former life as a train station. However the art was disappointing. But I got the feeling that most of the pictures I really wanted to see where either being loaned out or rotated.

Afterwards we took another meander through a less populated part of the West Bank, winding back through Jardin du Luxembourg where Hemingway allegedly hunted for pigeons. Then past the Sorbonne and a host of streets associated with Lost Generation adresses before winding up in the now familiar Rue Mouffetard. This time we found the house where Hemingway spent much of his original sojourn and I bought a copy of A Moveable Feast in the bookstore downstairs. Kate bought a beautiful red coat as well.





On the beautiful square at the top of the street we bought more 9 Euro beers before another three course feast in another house that Hemingway used to live in. More interesting, though, was it's status as the house where the poet Paul Verlaine departed this mortal coil. Stuffed and thouroughly sozzled we poured down the hill back towards La Republique.