So after we finally took Melanie's bags back to my apartment, we headed toward Sacre Coeur which is only about a 10 minute walk from my house. We came up from behind (I live north of Montmartre) and were met with huge crowds and tents of food and wine.
Sacre Coeur on the right, tents on the left
I saw more accordians on Saturday that I probably have collectively over the span of my life.
Melanie and I almost died on this street. The crowd got super dense, stopped moving, and then everyone started shoving eachother, sort of like a wine festival mosh pit. It was terrifying.
We checked out a little art gallery and then tried to cut through a courtyard back toward Sacre Coeur. There ended up being a fence in the way, but instead we found some secret tents where we probably were supposed to pay for food...
The free pasta only whetted our appetites, so Melanie and I got adventurous. We both had been talking about wanting to try escargots, when what tent should we stumble upon?
We split an order of 6, and found a seat on the steps up closest to the church.
After that we decided we wanted to grab dinner before the fireworks, so first we walked down the front of the Butte Montmartre, thinking we would find a restaurant down there that would be less crowded/less of a ripoff than the stuff at the top. We didn't. So after walking around Montmartre all day I was pretty unhappy with the thought of climbing back up, so Melanie and I took or first ride on the funiculaire!
I didn't take my own picture (shockingly!) but it's that thing.
Then we went back to the restaurants we originally saw. We checked out the menu of one place, went to sit down (we were seated at the end of a table with a family of 4... this was not a faily style restaurant), and realized they didn't have the fixed price menu we thought they did. So we walked out, Melanie told the waitresss that she was sick, and we went to the restaurant next door. Melanie got moules frites and I got the usual steak frites, salad and chocolate mousse. Then Melanie got gelato ("cookies" and banana flavored, yummm) and we went and staked out a spot on the steps of Sacre Coeur. We chilled for about an hour and a half trying to save seats for people we thought we were meeting up with. Luckily they didn't find us before the fireworks started because the giant spot we had slowly filled in until it was just Melanie and I. Then the fireworks started:
They were hands down the coolest fireworks I've ever seen. They're not as impressive as the Detroit fireworks, but they play music and the whole thing is orchestrated and cued up with the music that was playing, and the crowd was all packed in, singing along and swaying to the music. The fireworks were shot off at the foot of the butte so they were exploding right overhead... and it lasted like 15 minutes.
So after that we met up with two of my roommates who were with their friends-- 2 New Yorkers and 2 Swedes. The Swedes apparently live near us but on the other side of the butte, so we followed them to a few bars before we decided on one. We hung out and had kir and beer. On the way home we made sure to walk by the Moulin Rouge, Jennifer's friend was going back to New York the next day he hadn't seen it. Of course Pigalle on a Saturday night is not the nicest place to be, so we stayed only long enough to snap a couple of pictures and then caught the metro back to our apartment.
Lia's friend Jesse and my friend Melanie spent the night, so our apartment was like a giant sleepover. In the "morning" (lets be real, we didn't wake up until 1) we tried to check out the market at Porte Clignancourt but got discouraged and ended up turning around and getting kebap, as usual. No pictures from then, I was too burned out.
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