We were warned by our host that there would be locals who would position themselves at the foot of Sacre Coeur and attempt to sell you their friendship bands. They would always start by saying that there is no obligation to buy, just have a look as they weave it around your wrist. Once they try a dead knot, you would have to buy it - at whatever price they quote you. At that kind of situation, you can't refuse for 2 reasons, one as it's already on your wrist, and two as there are many more of them than there are 'you'.
With that knowledge in mind, as we approached the foot of the hill, true enough, there were many local men just standing there, approaching tourists to "try" their ware. I walked quickly and dodged one of them by walking behind this other couple. :P So in a way, we "escaped" them.
Sacre Coeur was really quite a sight, beautiful white church on top of the hill. When we entered the church, the nuns were in the middle of their noon time Office Devotion prayers. One of the nuns leading the prayer had this incredible voice - like an angel lor! The acoustics of the church was also really quite amazing... Hair can stand when the nuns start singing man...
We paid 5 euros to climb to the top of the dome and our guidebook says that at the top of the dome, that will be the 2nd tallest viewing point other than Eiffel Tower. So we climbed and climbed...man, some parts of the stairwell was SO narrow, if you were claustrophobic, you would die as it was narrow, quite dark and bloody cold.
FINALLY, we reached the top and the view was indeed great. Pity it was a rather cloudy day so we couldn't really see very far. We stayed up there for quite a while, after 10 mins or so, then we realised we were the only ones up there. We wondered why there was no one with us as there were always many tourists at good viewing points and we started our nonsense reasonings. After we joked for about 5 mins, there was STILL no one, we started to raise eyebrows at each other and decided we SHOULD go down. Chickens right? Hee...
We left Sacre Coeur and had lunch. Darth Binky had Confit de Canard (Preserved Duck) and me, Beef Stew. The France really make their duck well and my beef stew was good, let's just say that they must have used one whole bottle of red wine for each plate of beef stew they served. Lovebell's liquor content in her beef stew is NO FIGHT compared to these French ones.
We walked past the Artist Square where the artists would draw your profile for about 80 euros. We didn't get one, 2 reasons - no wall space to hang and no money! Ha!
Montmartre (Mount of Martyr) area is famous for another landmark other than Sacre Coeur, and it's the now very famous Moulin Rouge. The walk along their red light district was most interesting. Hugh photos of very naked women advertise their business and the French are really not shy about showing their wares. No stars, no stickers, no smiley faces to cover the important bits - it's "show and tell" in the adult world. We did think of dining at the Moulin Rouge but the cost of dinner & show was a little heavy - 100 euros per pax. That's S$400 blinking dollars!! So poor us (literally) had to pass on that. :(
Last part of the day, I wanted to catch the view of Eiffel Tower at sundown as the tower will light up and at every hour, on the hour, the whole structure will go up in sparkles!! More accurately, 20 000 bulbs will light up the whole Eiffel Tower!! The sight was AMAZING!! It was worth standing in the blinking cold (minus 1 degrees C) and wind and just stare at the tower for that 10 mins... The highlight (no pun intended) of my day...
1 comment:
See? Told you my stew was kid's play. Hmmm.. next time I shd just stew it in pure red wine. Heheheheh
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