Montmartre

After a relaxing morning, Kenny and I were supposed to be heading with the others to a jazz festival including Jen’s favourite band. By the time the bus came and we were on it, however, I realised I wasn’t going to be fit to sit places and be cheerful, all at once – I’m still feeling quite bashed around from Thursday – so I gracefully diverted and hopped on the Montmartrobus for some easy sightseeing.

I rode the bus up to Place du Tertre, where the artists and tourist gather in a wonderful show of codependence. It’s interesting to walk around and see the art, some of it wonderful, innovative work, or at least skilled, and some mass-produced and overpriced. It’s a lively place, and not so overwhelmed by its tourists that it has lost all atmosphere.

The church of St-Pierre is at one end of the square, and I remembered it from a previous visit. It is a small church, but with character, having had its bombed out windows replaced with legitimately artistic, modern, mosaic-like portrayals of the life of Christ in bold colours.

I remembered trying to light a candle in this church ten years ago and burning my finger. Chuckling inwardly at my youthful stupidity, I dropped some coins in the offering box and picked up a tealight for old times’ sake.

Yes, I stuck my thumb in the flame. Let’s move on, shall we?

There’s quite the view from the top of the Butte.

Having wandered around it, it seemed an appropriate time to do the big sight of Montmartre – the great big cream cake of Sacre Coeur.

It was a case of shuffling inside, really, then being ushered around in a circuit, anywhere but actually into the pew area. There were people in the pews, but it wasn’t apparent how they got in there, except that a man was standing by a velvet rope (I’m not making this up), making value judgments about whether each person was a suitable person to be allowed in to pray or whether they looked too much like a tourist. I’m not kidding – it was a church with bouncers.

I determined to ponder this while looking up at the big Jesus mosaic above the altar. I sat down. I looked up. At this point it became clear to me that from the seats allocated to those on the “tourist” side, I was never going to have a clear view of anything more than Jesus’ left hand. I thought a lot about privilege and monopoly while sitting there. I thought a lot about Gentiles and the chosen. I thought that the chair was pretty uncomfortable and I should get moving again.

One brief but fulfilling conversation with a shopkeeping nun (in French) later, I was outside once more, and went wandering. I covered most of the upper portion of Montmartre.

Montmartre still has a (tiny) vineyard.

I happened upon these street performers who were finishing up Waltz II from Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, one of my favourites, and for a few coins they were happy to play it again!

I happened to overhear one tourist remarking to another that humans are rather ill-suited to the task of walking downhill, and I spent the remainder of the downward portion of my journey pondering this.

Back on the Montmartobus, I was reminded that this was not necessarily a city in which the urge to hang back was seen as mere politeness – a very nice old lady patted my hand and said, “C’est terminus,” obviously assuming I wasn’t getting off the bus.