Montmatre Mayhem

After another hot night, where sanity was only maintained thanks to the fan, we danced the hotel breakfast dance and emerged for another day of Paris. After a long walk yesterday, we decided to use the metro more and legs less.

Our first destination was Montmatre. We alighted at the relevant station and made our way through the streets towards the mont. This seemed to be the haberdashery area of the city with fabrics of all description spilling out of shops and on the streets, rather in the way that coffee shops do. Talking of coffee shops…

We sat at a table in a quiet little square covered by trees and waited patiently for coffee which arrived in the end. It really didn’t matter, there was plenty to see and we were in no rush. So many times, we would see people walk past and recognise others who were sat down at a table. They would come over, do the double kiss thing, ‘ca va’ each other and often sit down for a while, either with or without ordering a drink before moving on. We saw this happen with young and old alike. And this, in the middle of a city. Something else noteworthy was the lack of constantly present mobile phones. How many times do we see a whole group of people who have ‘met’ for coffee and all of them are distracted by the latest ping on their device? It seems that the French are holding on to the art of proper communication. I wonder for how long? I hope a long time to come. Vive la connection!

Now was the time to mount the steps to the mont. The crowds grew steadily and we finally rounded the corner to the final wide set of steps that take you to the top. I looked up to see the most bizarre sight. The top four or so steps were packed with people all facing towards us in order to see the impressive view of Paris. That much is understandable, but from our vantage point lower down the steps, all you could see was a sea of phones. It was like there was a wall of them. No faces, just phones. It’s like the phone has now replaced the face in our society. Life in the virtual. We eventually fought our way through the phone wall and as we popped out the other side, we were pounced on by allegedly deaf, pretty young girls who thrust paper in front of us and asked us to sign in voices which mimicked those of a person who couldn’t hear properly. Kate signed and then they asked for a signature and a post code and your printed name….

Then the alarm bells sounded at last. We googled the incident and, sure enough, there are currently groups of females at Montmatre, pouncing on tourists, pretending to be deaf and encouraging you to sign bits of paper. It felt like a bit of a thump in the guts to know we’d been diddled. It turns out that the reason for the signature etc is to shame you in to giving more cash. At least we had remained impervious to their persuasion in that respect. We gave them no money. It underlined how you can easily be caught off guard at the wrong moment. Something the band of thieves obviously know and played on.

We then spent about ten minutes wandering round Montmatre. It was as much as we could bear. The scammers followed by ridiculous crowds was enough for us. We did a circuit with unseeing eyes and came straight back down the steps. At the bottom we found a relatively quiet area shaded by trees and licked our wounds as we ate the lunch we prepared at breakfast…

We had had enough of the merry-go-round of tourist Paris. We decided this was the time to get to the Sienne and jump on a sight-seeing boat. This was perfect. We sat there, listening to the description of what we passed with fairly minimal interest and enjoyed being wafted down the river and back. Every now and again, we would pass groups of people either on a bank or in another boat and, in a curious but time-honoured way, feel the need to wave at them. This was usually started by children but before long adults would join the waving frenzy. What curious people we are. It’s a good job we don’t feel the need to do so on the M1…

This was our last evening of the trip in Paris. We had eaten very little so felt well justified in going in search of a galette. This was not difficult. Galettes and Crepes are very much the property of Brittany and Normandie but there were countless cafes which promised a ‘taste of Breton’. We stopped at one which served cider from Val de Rance which is just down the road from where my parents lived until very recently. It was, and is, the perfect compliment to Galettes and Crepes, which we happily feasted on. You wouldn’t believe how ‘complet’ you feel after a Galette Complet. (Ham, cheese and an egg) This was a Saturday evening and the weather was beautifully warm. Everyone was out and enjoying themselves. We were surrounded by people generally younger than ourselves who sat with a glass of wine or a beer. We didn’t witness excess anywhere. What we did witness, however, was a huge SPLAT right in between us and another couple on a table nearby. It was Pigeon poo. We looked at it amazed and then laughed with the next table at what a close call it had been for all of us. We also noticed that the offending Pigeon was still standing in the tree top directly above us. Well, we thought, at least it’s probably finished relieving itself after the shear size of the splat. A lot later, we decided it was time to go. Kate was sat at the table with her elbows resting on it. There was a gap between her elbows of about six inches. Another huge splat! This one landed exactly in between Kate’s elbows. An inch or two either way and Kate would have been wearing it. It was time to go. I explained to a waiter that the disgusting blob on the table was a Pigeon and not us. He was amused.

And so to the final night of laying on a bed, waiting for the next fan waft. We discovered that opening the windows made it slightly cooler but there was still so much noise outside. We ultimately opted for closed windows. I tried opening them after midnight, but still too much noise. At 2am, I looked outside to see if things were calming down. There was a takeaway Creperie opposite us. A whole gang of youths were stopped at it buying Crepes on their way home. How civilised!