I decided to check out the Montmartre area last night after work. Montmartre is most well known for its tremendous cathedral, La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur and for its role as an artistic hub at the end of the 19th century. It more recently gained acclaim when Jean-Pierre Jeunet based his film Amelié (2001) there.

I got off at the Pigalle Metro stop and wandered my way up winding sidestreets, passing charming restaurants and boutiques (that were actually still open!) and generally loving what I saw. I wandered my way up "la butte" via a long set of stone stairs. I stopped along the way, soaking up the gradually elevating view of Paris, and it was wonderful. Until I got to the top.

Now let me backtrack for one second. I will be in Paris for a little over a month. While I am technically a tourist, I do not live in a touristy area nor have I done too much touristy sight-seeing since being here for the past 2 weeks. I hadn't expected Le Sacré-Coeur to be pristine; in fact, I hadn't thought much about it. So, when I got to the top of Montmartre, it was a shock. It was as if I had been sucked into the vortex of a tourist tornado...as if the Sacré-Coeur was a giant "sticky tape" for tourists, hanging above the Parisian skyline.

There was a massive crowd of tourists swarming like mosquitos all around the top of the mount. They were at bars, at restaurants, eating french onion soup (in 90 degree weather). They had cameras swinging dangerously from hands. I beelined it into an ice-cream shop where a snot-nosed child immediately started to stomp on my foot. He must have been American, as his dad did nothing at all to stop him. I stumbled out onto the street, with melting ice-cream cone in hand, where people started to run into me left and right. I was beginning to think I was invisible but then I passed a man, an "artiste", who was soliciting people to get their portraits drawn. He looked at me and said, "I wish to be your ice-cream cone".

My stride quickened as I headed towards the cathedral. When I got there, a French boy was playing Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" on accoustic guitar, and his partner was collecting money. There was a bag of overflowing trash at the entrance to the cathdral and special tourist-oriented coin-presses sitting within its beautiful walls.

Le Sacré-Coeur itself is stunning, inside and out, but it was a relief to head back down into the streets of Paris. A little sign of proof that life is about the journey not the destination.