Saturday, May 11th was a fabulous day.  The weather was beautiful the family was rested and the tourists seemed to be sleeping in.  Kathleen and I let the girls do some sleeping in also, and walked 3 minutes down the road to the open market. Although we only bought some strawberries we thoroughly enjoyed the sounds, sights and smells of this very European custom.

After breakfast we made our way to the other side and the highest area of Paris – Montmartre. Our first encounter with this area was the Metro stop.  Climbing the stairs to the street took about 15 minutes – it must have been four stories below ground.  Again, the girls did fine – their parents were winded!  But what we found after our climb was really cute – old school Paris.

We made our way through the streets and up the hill, climbing the stairs next to the “funicular” and arrived at the church called Sacre Coeur which clearly  has the best view of this wonderful city!

Photos of the Sacre Coeur are not allowed, but I got one without being arrested.  This church as an interesting story associated with it.  It was built at the end of the 1800’s and completed in 1919 – and was a crown jewell for this neighborhood atop a large hill.  During WWII it was targeted by the German bombers.  13 bombs were dropped all around the church – not one hit, and nobody was injured!  The stained glass all shattered but that was the basically the extent of the damage.  Devine intervention? You decide.

From Sacre Coeur we walked to the center square of Montmartre, just behind Sacre Coeur to see Paris’ oldest church Saint Pierre.  Although this section of Paris wasn’t always part of Paris proper, it is now, and this church was consecrated around 1147 and boasts four sixth century column capitals, that were reused from Roman times to build a structure on this site to pay homage to the God of War – Mercury.  It’s a beautiful church… and you’re allowed to take photos here…

 From St. Pierre we made our way through the crowd to see the artists at work.  There are probably 40 or 50 of these men and women sketching and painting in the square, surrounded by gift shops and restaurants.  We had lunch in the middle of the square and watched them work…

Lunch was fun. Caroline loved her Chocolat but Erin thought Schweppes would be ginger ale…

After lunch we made our way down the hill, bought a scarf or two, saw a famous nightclub,

…and made our way to the Eiffel Tower again – this time seeing it from the Trocadero.  It was a good place for some photos…  Caitlin and I enjoyed the irony that the pigeons created.

After jumping for joy here, we walked down the river a bit to find a boat for a last tour of the city…  The monument that Caitlin is photographing is to honor Princess Diana.  It’s a replica of Lady Liberty’s flame and was placed on top of the underpass where she was killed.  For Kathleen and me it brought back all of those terrible memories from that August night many years ago…

The boat ride was a fun way to finish our last day in Paris!