Thursday, 4 April 2006

Warm weather continues which is good because we are gradually discarding our winter clothes so as to make travelling easier. Since tomorrow will probably be spent packing, cleaning and organising for our return we took a last wander through Montmartre. Virginia picked up a free magazine called "Where" at a local hotel and it had a very good walking tour of Montmartre in it. While we didn't want to do the whole walk, we picked out some things we had not seen before. And, by the way, a useful thing to do when you are travelling independently is to go into any of the large chain hotels (which usually host tour groups) and pick up all of the free literature usually available in multiple languages.

On this walk we wandered down the little Rue St-Rustique which with no sidewalks or shops is very picturesqe and usually empty of tourists. At the end of the street is the restaurant La Bonne Franquette which used to be Aux Billiards in Bois and has been there for more than 150 years. It was the meeting place of Pissarro, Degas, Sisley, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Monet and Zola (not that we are into name-dropping). We returned to that unusual sculpture of a man walking through a wall having discovered that it is of the "Passe-Muraille", the hero of Marcel Ayme's 1943 story about a man who could walk through walls. We then wandered down to look at the old windmills. The former Moulin Radet is now a very posh restaurant called Le Moulin de la Galette; but the real Moulin de la Galette (made famous by Renoir's "Bal du Moulin de la Galette) is a bit further down the street and now on private property.

We then walked back down to Rue Caulaincourt and on home. After lunch we mooched around doing odds and sods before going out for a glass of wine sitting outside at a local "bistro" watching the world go by (Tres Parisien).

Now Virginia wishes to comment on the new season's fashions. Polka dots of every size and every colour are the in thing as are tiered skirts of every length in Spanish style. Shoes are flat, "little girlish" ballet style with T-bars. No high heels in sight except for those who will always do their own thing. For Princess Mary of Denmark watchers, according to advertisements for various magazines here, at the time of her second wedding anniversary, she has a new secret!