14 November, 2013

Monday was my last day in Paris, and I spent a good portion of it on the hill around the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  This is the artistic – once bohemian – area called Montmartre.  Today, like much of Paris, it is filled with shops selling the Artistic Parisian Experience to the masses.  The bohemian spirit may live on somewhere in the underbelly of Paris, but the Montmartre of Picasso, Dali and Toulouse-Lautrec does not exist in the way it once did.  Much like Hemingway’s Latin Quarter on the South Bank of the Seine, Montmartre now caters to those looking for something that doesn’t really exist anymore.

The Basilica doesn’t allow photography inside, which is something not respected by many of the mass of tourists there.  I, however, do tend to respect the requests of these sacred places, so didn’t take any photos inside.  I did snap a couple with the phone in the crypt.  The stairway is the only one worth sharing.  Up on the walkway around the dome, however, photography is quite permissible.  The view is quite fantastic, much like I imagine the view from the Tower to be.  Perhaps next time I return to Paris I will verify that.

Click to panoramas to embiggen for a better look!

That evening, my last in Paris, I returned to Place Charles de Gaulle and the Arc de Triomphe.  Being the 11th day of the 11th month, Armistice & Remembrance Day, there is a ceremony at the grave of the Unknown Soldier who was buried there in 1918 following the end of WW I.  In every French town there are memorials to the fallen in that conflict.