Texas Girl Takes on the World: Montmartre, You Have My Heart

Today, mama and I ventured out a bit from our little haven near the Eiffel Tower. A former colleague of mine spends half her year in France and the other in Texas. So when I first visited Paris last year, she urged me to visit her old neighborhood of Montmartre. I wasn't able to make it on my last trip, so I made sure to put it on my list this time around. After visiting today, I now want to live there and have already started looking for apartments (note: I have not cleared any of this with my husband or puppies, but a girl can dream, right?)

Ah Montmartre, where do I start? First off, it's such a NEIGHBORHOOD. You can feel the normalcy there. The only throng of tourists is on the main street leading directly up to the Sacre Coeur, a Roman Catholic church of the Sacred Heart that sits at the very highest point in Paris. Oddly enough, the streets immediately to the left and right of the main one were pretty empty. Or at least of tourists. You could tell there were normal people heading to and from their Saturday errands as we saw several of them walking with baguettes hanging from the tops of grocery sacks and carrying their laundry. The neighborhood is full of hills (hell, I need to get in shape), really awesome little boutiques and restaurants and loads of fabric shops (yes, Keniesha, fabric shops. You would have been in heaven here). It's very bustling, but it all feels like a Saturday in Montmartre vs. an everyday occurrence. As if the trade-off for living in a such a cool neighborhood is to let the tourists take over once or twice a week and for days on end during the holidays.

Visiting the Sacre-Coeur was a bit surreal. Since it's the highest point in the city, it essentially means you are on top of the world. It also means that you have to climb up to that high point and I was sure that we would not make it. Mama and I were like "Well, we'll climb as high as we can, take pictures from there and then climb back down." Lucky for us, there were cool elevators to take you up the hill to the church for a couple Euros so our trip wasn't in vain. After snapping cool views of the city and a million selfies, we climbed our way back down - and honestly, it wasn't so bad.

Mama and I also ventured off the beaten track from all the tourists to find food and boy did we stumble upon a gem. Samrana is a little Indian-Pakistani restaurant that was completely empty. After reading the menu, we took a leap and went inside. We are so glad we took a chance because the food was seriously some of the best Indian I've ever had. Our waiter (he might be the owner) is fluent in French learned from just living in Paris for eight years and is originally from Bangladesh. Very nice guy, was very patient with my broken French and so gracious and kind. We were able to sit right in the front window to people watch in between bites. All in all, an interesting and wonderful day in a neighborhood I hope to spend more time in as I continue visiting the city. You know, or live in one day.

Seriously so grateful for these little lifts because we would not have made it to the top...in one day! LOL Can you see the stairs on the side that were an alternative to the lift?