My Paris Neighborhood

This may be a long post but I wanted to show you some of the things I saw everyday as I walked to the metro stop. I loved our neighborhood of Montmartre.

Every morning we would walk by the fruit and vegetable stands and get a piece of fruit for our lunch. This one was the best.

It had the best looking strawberries and I wanted to buy some in the worst way but it wouldn't travel well in my messenger bag. I usually just got an apple.

Of course we had to stop by the bakery and pick up something for breakfast and lunch. I usually got a very rich, buttery pastry with fruit filling for breakfast and a olive/sun dried tomatoes/feta cheese pastry for lunch. The paper they wrapped it in was very greasy by mid-day there was so much butter in the crust. It was really yummy. I know this will be hard to believe but I actually lost weight eating this stuff because of all the walking we did.
We did walk by the butcher but I never wanted to go in. Something about he feet still being on the chickens just grossed me out. Some of them still had heads too.

This was the church in our neighborhood and we did hear the chimes on Sunday.

The Sacre Coeur was also just up the hill from us. It sits on the highest point in Paris and you can see all over the city from this site. When we went there was a harpist playing out on the steps and human statues entertaining the crowd. The stairs to get up to the Sacre Coeur was very steep. The ones in the pictures are just the ones when you get there. We climbed about five of those on the way.

This is what the streets looked like. Cobble stones and narrow streets and sidewalks. This one is going downhill and leads to Moulin Rouge and the Paris Opera House. We did walk the 20 minutes down to the Opera house one morning, eating our pastry on the way. Only tourists eat as they walk. I never saw a French person eating anything except in a cafe or restaurant. Food on the go is an American thing. I couldn't even get a coffee to go. Coffee is to be drunk sitting in a cafe and you are expected to take your time drinking it. Because of that, I didn't get as much coffee as I would have liked. We were just too busy to take the time.

I saw some very cute little cars in our neighborhood. This one was being driven by an old man who had just done his grocery shopping and was ready to leave so I snapped a quick photo.

We had a carousel just outside our metro stop. It was very similar to this one. They must like carousels because we saw three of them while we were there.

This was our Metro stop and this particular morning there was a man playing an accordion. Quite often we were serenaded on the Metro with various instruments and then they would walk around with a cup for donations. It was so fun.