Paris morsels - Kate

---

Ascending Paris

Ascending Paris Well I know you are all sitting on the edge of your chairs wondering what on earth happened to us on the last week of of journey through France. I appologise for the tardy upkeep of our blog, and yes Paris happened and ran us ragged!

So to wet your taste buds I am sneaking in a few of my special moments. I will no doubt get a stern talking to (again) from the mistress of the blog for jumping ahead and posting all the pictures. Betty will soon post more info and pictures.

We spent twelve days in Paris and still didn't see all there was to see. We walked for miles until my hips ached and I found myself diving for every bench seat in sight. We rode the metro like locals by the end of our stay yet never perfected the accent well enough to avoid giggles from taxi drivers and street vendors. It was however, comforting to be mistaken for a Parisian by most until enaged in conversation.

I had no expectations of Paris. I found the city itself to be a densely overpopulated maze of impressive 1850's Haussmann apartments peppered with Architectural masterpieces and manicured gardens. Amongst all this rigidity survives a society of culturaly blessed Parisians who move within all this history and traffic mayhem like ants inside a nest. I was overwhelmed by the physical prescence of all these people, not only Parisians, it was other tourists aswell. It is impossible to describe what first seems to be unbridaled chaos on the streets of Paris, that gradually became systematic chaos as one became aquainted with how it all seemed to work.

Parisians love to look. They will give you a good going over in a matter of seconds and then once digested will turn and continue on with whatever they were doing, with no suggestion of judgment or unease. It was one more thing I grew accustomed to after 12 days of riding the metro.

Our apartment was splendid and we enjoyed living on the Rue Montmartre. Although we had to ascend the 77 steps every afternoon and sometimes again late at night, it helped us to relax into our new foreign city. Just across the street was a very nice Boulangerie and 1 minute up the street was the Metro station, 'Grand Boulevard'. We were a 10 minute walk from the Louvre museum and a 20 minute walk from the Marais.

Part of my preperation for Paris was to discover a good Jazz venue and somewhere to dance the swing. We hit the jackpot at Caveau de la Huchette in the Latin district across the Seine from the Notre Dame. With a 60 year legacy this jazz club oozed history, not to mention the stone walls vaulted ceilings, of what was once a place of questionable character. "Long before 1551, the building bearing the N°5 on rue de la Huchette was the meeting place of both the « Rosicrucians » and the « Templers », and in 1772 was transformed into a secret lodge............The principal members of the « Conventions » could be found there (Danton, Marat, Saint-Just and Robespierre), and numerous trials were conducted on the spot (followed by peremptory executions).You will find there one after another, the court room, the prison, the place of execution.
In the lower room, there stills exists a very deep well, used to remove all evidence of the crimes committed there." from their website.

We never got to the aforementioned 'lower room', instead found a spot on a bench seat in a cave like room and watched on as dancers of all ages hot shoed it to a 4 piece band. We held our own amongst the old crew of regulars and Betty couldn't help throw in some theatrics as we busted some smooth moves to an old favourite, Ray Charles' - Hallelujah I love her So. It was a real buzz getting to dance aswell as hearing a great band in such an amazing setting.
unfortunately there are no photos of the night.


Kate

---