Visiting Montmartre in Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Montmartre in Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I went to the Montmartre neighborhood in Paris one weekend day.  Montmartre used to be a small village outside of Paris that became part of the city as Paris experienced exponential growth in the 19^th century.

I took my baguette sandwich of Laughing Cow cheese and ham with me and a bottle of water to visit the famous Parisian Montmartre butte with a big, white shrine on top of it called Sacre Coeur.

I began my visit by walking along avenue Rochouart with all the throngs of people examining the latest deal offered by the Tati Clothing Empire located on the street.

I turned onto Avenue Steinkerque and followed rue d’Orsel to the rue des Trois Frères and onto Place des Abesses.

Montmartre is the spot where the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church was created on August 15, 1554 by Saint François Xavier along with six other men, who vowed to become apostles of the Catholic Church overseas.

The first time I saw the name François Xavier was in the city of Hirado on the southern island of Kyushu in Japan.

(I lived in Japan as an exchange student with the Youth for Understanding International Exchange program in high school.)

From place des Abesses, I followed rue Ravignac up the side of the “butte” or “hill.”  I marveled just like a tourist at a mecca of modern painting called the Bâteau Lavoir.

Some of this apartment building’s artistic inhabitants included Picasso, Juan Gris, Modigliani, and Braques.  Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at the Bâteau Lavoir.

I climbed up some more charming streets oblivious to the grade.  When I arrived at the Place du Tertre, the artists were doing brisk trade in night scenes at this spot.

I made a quick visit inside Saint Pierre de Montmartre.  The church used to be part of a huge abbey that sat on top of the butte.  Saint Pierre along with Saint Germain des Près and Saint Martin des Champs are the oldest churches in Paris.  The abbey was closed during the French Revolution.

Saint Martin des Champs was begun in 1134 on the site of an earlier Merovingian Church.  The builders recycled a few columns from pre-Christian times in the building of this Church.

The French have lived by the “waste not, want not, but avoid rotten food” motto for centuries.

I avoided the tourists at Place du Tertre and took rue Rustique down the hill.  I passed the Montmartre Vineyards on my way down.  The wine is not supposed to be good, but the citizens of the quarter could just be saying that and squirreling it away for themselves.

I passed number 54 on rue Lépic where Vincent van Gogh lived with his brother Theo for a time.  Little country homes abound in Montmartre, because it used to be a village.  I thought it would be fun to work in La Défense and come home to my country house by Place du Tertre at night when I walked there.

I spent an hour touring the Montmartre Cemetery.  I saw the tombs of Stendahl, Zola, Berlioz, Fragonard, Alexandre Dumas (the son), and Degas.  I felt as if I had rendered homage to the greatest French artists of all time in this cemetery.

My favorite French writer is still Stendahl, who wrote The Red and the Black.

After my tour, I took the Métro over to the Latin Quarter and had my hair fixed to look cute in Paris.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Pere Lachaise Cemetery (Paris) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery (Paris) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I first moved to Paris (France), I did walking tours around the City while Laurent worked late hours.  One of the most interesting places in Paris to learn history is Père Lachaise Cemetery.

I took my green Michelin touring guide with me and found my way among the paths and avenues of the Cemetery.

I easily found the singer Jim Morrison’s grave.  You cannot but help find it, because his fans have written and/or inscribed “Jim” on other tombs to guide tourists to his grave.

When I arrived at Jim Morrison’s grave, teenagers and college students from around the world were smoking marijuana at his tomb. (Mary Jane in Detroit-speak and the subject of a Rick James dance song).

I thought Père Lachaise outside of Jim Morrison’s tomb was very pretty with flowers and avenues and said to myself, “Well, the dead in Chicago do not have cemeteries as fancy as this, but they retain their right to vote.” 

The voter rolls still need to be checked for people with death notices and homes that are holes in the ground as well there.  

In Atlanta last year, I learned that not all candidates have been vetted to run in their district - you need to check recent land surveyor records for residency.  Also, you have to be sure what the status is on on out-of-state campaign contributions.

Along the way, I found two pieces of funerary sculpture that must have been jokes.  The first one had a coffin sculpture with skulls as feet holding it up.

Below the coffin, there was a space where a skeleton angel was squeezing out to get to the living.

Another tomb showed a man opening his casket to offer the viewer a rosebud.  For 1890, the deceased or his family had a great sense of humor.

Inside a domed mausoleum for the Bibesco Family was a photograph of Anna de Noailles.  She had written on her photograph, “I was not made for death.”

I had no idea whom she was, but I liked her defiant spirit.  I wanted to write a biography about her one day.  Cemeteries are always full of writing ideas.

I felt like Edgar Allen Poe wandering among the cats, who always seem to live in cemeteries.  Was there a cask of amontillado somewhere for the living?

I visited the graves of Collette and the composer Rossini before leaveing.  I was sure that this would be the first of many visits to Père Lachaise.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Parisian History Museum at Hotel Carnavalet with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Parisian History Museum at Hôtel Carnavalet in the Marais District with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I set out to visit the Hôtel Carnavalet in the Marais District to learn about the history of Paris in this museum.

The Hôtel Carnavalet was built in 1548.  In 1660, the architect François Mansart gave the building its Renaissance aspect with ornamental gardens and rectangular courtyards.

The sculptor Jean Goujon worked on the graceful Four Seasons bas-relief sculptures that emerged from the walls around the courtyard.

Literature lovers would adore the Hôtel Carnavalet no matter who worked on it, because this was the home of Marie de Rabutin, Marquise de Sévigné.  She lived in the Hôtel Carnavalet from 1677 to 1696 and wrote many letters to her daughter here.

The Carnavalet Museum itself houses a collection of items devoted to the history of Paris.  We took a guided tour and then went back to visit the museum ourselves. 

I was interested to learn that most families could not trace their Parisian lineage back more than three or four generations.

Paris grew rapidly in the 19^th century, drawing many people to the Capital.  Surrounding villages like Montmartre were surrounded intact by Paris expansion.  However, Parisian dwellers tend to retire elsewhere or move if they can to a country home that was often a vacation home when they had children.

Paris is a city for the young on the move or for people with merchandise to move like artwork.

One person who managed to live through the Revolution with his head intact and then serve under the Napoleonic Empire was Talleyrand, the diplomat.  He showed up in all of the official paintings for diametrically opposed governments.

“There’s a survivor and thriver,” I thought.  He would have coined a phrase like “What’s the word today?” to get Champagne and truffles at a very reasonable price to hold cocktail parties under all governments. 

At these cocktail parties he would probably wheedle information out of tipsy foreign businessmen and women while giving them the addresses on where to find great, designer clothing at a low price in return for rights to build the Suez Canal.

(For more information on Talleyrand, read Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Rouen (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Rouen (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On one of many weekends to come, Laurent took me out to Rouen, which is located on the Seine River.  He went to business school there and received an MBA in Finance and Accounting.

The Impressionist painter Monet made Rouen famous with his multiple views of it in fog, rain, sleet, snow, and nice weather.  You pass Giverny on the way to Rouen, so he made money close to home in his retirement years.

Rouen has a population of 400,000 people, who live in this “city-museum.”  Every building we walked by was from the 15^th century it seemed.

He showed me several key spots on campus like the offices of his chess club, the Junior Achievement Business club, and the dorm where he studied.

Rouen owes its 18^th century success to the sale of indigo-colored cotton.  Now it has a port, railroad, and other infrastructure to make it an industrial center that serves as a main entryway into Paris for commercial shipping traffic.

We visited the Cathedral, which is huge.  A wedding was going on, so we left.

We ate pizza in a 15^th century building and went to the movies.  We did not care about the weather, because we were seeing films.   This became a weekend outing for us when we did not want to spend too much money.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Musings about St. Roch Church (Paris) Tombs - 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Musings about St. Roch Church (Paris) Tombs by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Le Nôtre’s Tomb in St. Roch is inspiration for a film.  Le Nôtre designed the gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte and at Versailles.

Louis XIV went to a dinner at Vaux-le-Vicomte held by his finance minister Fouquet.  Fouquet served the king on gold-plate dishes, which angered Louis XIV, because all of his gold was melted down to pay Swiss mercenaries for his many border wars.

Louis XIV asked Fouquet to do one last financial operation and, then, arrested him.

Louis XIV brought Fouquet’s architect Le Vau, writer of fairy tales Perrault, and Le Nôtre to the plain of Versailles to build his imposing and well-visited palace.

The book entitled The Sun King’s Garden: Louis XIV, André le Nôtre and the Creation of the Gardens of Versailles by Ian Thompson speculates that Le Nôtre was Louis XIV’s only friend.  They rode in separate carriages, but spoke about the state of the gardens often.

Fouquet’s mistress Louise de la Vallière also became Louis XIV’s mistress once the King imprisoned Fouquet.

The moral of this story is to not make the King jealous of your wealth and flaunt it or he will seize your property to give my blog an ending, or moral with a lesson, like Perrault’s Fairy Tales.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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