For our first day in Paris, we visited the Sacré-Coeur Basilica and the Montmartre quarter.
The Sacré-Cœur was built on the Montmartre hill, which was a former Gaulish pagan and is now an important Christian place of worship. The site enables you to overlook Paris and have a splendid view. This zone is particularly frequented by tourists and pickpockets so you should stay vigilant. The basilica’s visit is free, except if you want to visit the dome. The basilica was finished in 1923 and its project was decided in the 1870s and was considered a “national vow” after the military defeat against Prussia. Pictures are forbidden inside the basilica, even if a lot of tourists do not respect this rule.
The Montmartre quarter is famous for the « Placfge des Artistes” (Artists Square): caricaturists, painters, drawers… you’ll get a lot of choice to have someone make your portrait. You are likely to be called out many times by some artists wanting to take you as a model. Walk in the small paved-streets and let the ambiance of this so singular quarter charms you. It is also a good opportunity to buy souvenirs, which are very cheap there.
If you walk down some streets, you will find the Moulin Rouge, kind of impressive from outside. We nevertheless did not enter inside.
We continued our day by getting back in Paris’s city center. We took the metro to the Invalides, a wonderful building which is a former military hospital, home and barracks for veterans inaugurated by Louis XIV. Here are Napoleon I’s grave and the Army Museum.
We then went to the Eiffel Tower and to the park next to it which is ideal to picnic despite the important amount of tourists. As we had already gone to the top, we chose not to do it this time because of the expensive price. Going to the top of the most emblematic monument of France is a memorable thing and offers you an astonishing view over the city, but doing it once was enough for us. Seeing the Eiffel Tower remains a big moment and that’s why we went there to take some pictures.
We walked to the Place du Trocadero, another emblematic viewpoint over the tower. With flowers, fountains and statues, this place will offer you memorable shots.
One of the specificity of Paris is the distance between each monument: if you don’t want to walk fourty-fifty minutes, you will need to take the public transportation that we evoked in our previous article. You need to know that Uber is very expensive in Paris, way more than in other cities. If you don’t have much time, it is hard to discover Paris by walking contrary to Lisbon, Berlin, Copenhagen or Rome. We find this fact a bit unfortunate as we prefer discovering by walking in order to be surprised.
We spend our whole afternoon in the Louvre Museum. What can we say about this architectural masterpiece. The building itself and the gardens (we will talk about them in our next article) are worth it.
If you do not want to spend hours in the queue, you should book your tickets in advance on the official website: be careful with the sellers around the museum who propose you printed tickets that may not be valid. It’s obvious that we could not visit the whole museum, but we chose beforehand the places and galleries we wanted to see: it is better to do less but to enjoy and taking enough time to contemplate what is around. We stopped in front of the room where the Mona Lisa is exposed to see the amount of tourists which was there. Even if we try not to pass judgement on this blog, we feel sorry that this painting draws the whole attention to the detriment of other huge works of art which have also a big value. You also need, depending on the time, to queue to enter the big room where you can only see the crowd settled in front of the painting. The Louvre is a complete experience which brings you through various universes, from Roman, Greek and Egyptian Antiquity to Italian Renaissance.
This first day in Paris was particularly tiring especially because of the crowd in each street. But the adventure is worth it and we could not wait for the next day to come back in the beautiful French capital.
Useful links:
Sacré Cœur : http://www.sacre-coeur-montmartre.com/
Louvre Museum: https://www.louvre.fr/
2 Steps Abroad 