Montmartre is a hill in the north of Paris, known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit & also famous as a bohemian district. Many artists had studios or worked around the community of Montmartre such as Henri de Tolouse-Lautrec, Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso & Vincent van Gogh. Montmartre is also the setting for several hit films, as the hipster mainstream Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (who doesn’t remember le Café des 2 Moulins?).  

Sacré Cœur

Moulin Rouge

Montmartre is amazing, it’s the iconic bohemian paradise. The moment we got out of the Abessess station I knew I was in heaven, I knew it was the place I would like to spend my days until this life was finished {I mean, if only I could do it one hundred years before, thought}. I’m utterly obsessed with Lautrec, he is my favorite painter since I was a little kid! I remember my mom had this notebook with “La Goulue” on it’s cover & I used to look at it & think it was the pretiest thing ever; I have no idea why, but the lines, colors & movement really caught my eye. It took me weeks to write this post & I failed to express all my feelings in words, but I’ll share them, anyway.

First things first: Abessess. I love the old Métropolitain style & this was the first station featuring it, I was the only weirdo taking pictures of it. When we started to walk around, what a pleasure! The streets & buildings are adorable, Montmarte is charming like no where else I’ve been to; we really have that feeling that we are not in this age anymore. Obviously nowadays we have no artists hanging out, only tourists & souvenir sellers, but I still can dream. We took an elevator to the Sacré Cœur because we were running out of time; unfortunatelly we only spent a couple of hours in Montmartre. The Basilica itself is not more beautiful than Notre Dame or Sainte- Chapelle, that we had already seen, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. People were in fact a little rude, saying we couldn’t take pictures when we didn’t even have a camera in hands. Oh, & it’s more dangerous there than any other places in our whole trip, so you better watch out.

We decided to walk down the hill to appreciate the neighborhood & find the Moulin Rouge. Down on the streets, we got to see the Sacré Cœur all lighten up above us & it was truly impressive {you can see a charming manège in my picture}. Heading to the Moulin Rouge we passed by lots of sex shops & strip houses {again: heaven!} & since it’s our tradition to go to sex shops we jumped in. Oh my goth, I found so many cute stuff that I can’t find in Brazil! It’s worth the visit, even thought I didn’t find my Burlesque Hello Kitty mug.

Walking a little more I saw it: a moulin shaped neon! I cried a little, I must confess. The ticket was over my budget so I couldn’t get in, what a shame. I don’t care, tho. I can’t believe one century ago my favorite artist was drinking absynthe inside those walls, I traveled ten hours straight for that moment. Holy shit. I’m crying again. You’ll never understand how much I love him.

The bad thing about our little trip to Montparnasse is: we didn’t stay there much, I wish I had spent at least one whole day there. We didn’t even get to see le Café des 2 Moulins {on our trip to the airport later I saw that it was exatly on the street of the Moulin Rouge, so you have no idea how I wanted to cut myself when I found that out}. My main goal is to go back to Paris to make that up.

P.S.:  “La Goulue” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec {1891}.