Montmartre

• Hotel de Ville is having two free exhibits until March, Cabu (a popular french carticaturist) and Doisneau (famous for the b&w picture of the couple kissing on a busy street in Paris). Today, I went to the Cabu exhibit, mostly because it was free, but now I'm a fan...
• I went to the Sacre-Couer...it took me ages to find it, but it was worth all those flights of stairs and impossibly hilly streets (of course I went the hard way). I was absolutely mesmerized by the vividness of the stained glass, and sat in one of the altars admiring it for quite some time.
• Travelling alone means either no pictures of myself, or the less-flattering arms length pictures. I opt for the arms-length, which usually takes 10 shots to get right (most are of my right eye and part of my nose, or of just me and no vista in the background, lol)
• I walked down the six flights of stairs in front of the Sacre-Couer so that I could make my way to Montmartre. As soon as I got to the bottom, I was greeted by a type of high pressure sales I'd never encountered before. A man came up to me, trying to attach a colourful piece of string to my jacket. When I said 'no merci', he grabbed my arm and started talking at me. I had to say 'no merci' 5 times, getting more assertive each time, before he would let go. I looked around to see a gang of them...bullying all the tourists with their pieces of string. They even grabbed on to children's jackets, scared mothers swatting them away. If that's my scariest experience in Paris, no problem...but I get the sense that they'd be a lot meaner at night.
• I didn't like Montmartre, as those who know me would probably have guessed. I found it cheap, touristy, and ugly. I suppose I didn't give it enough of a chance though, perhaps there are some beautiful things to see there (not that the Moulin Rouge was one of them, I found it a little anti-clamatic ;) )