Sacre Coeur, Eiffel Tower, Hotel d'Invalides

Thursday we made another trip into Paris with plans to meet my longtime friend for lunch. My prior two visits to Paris, I stayed in his flat - once while he himself was in Arizona getting married to my former employer - so I could not visit Paris without at least having lunch or a drink. We arranged to meet at 2 PM. Our days have been ending and starting later and later. The sun sets so late here - at least relative to Jakarta - that we feel like we are in the land of perpetual sun. It is up when we go to bed, and it is up when we awake. Everywhere else we have lived or visited in the last fourteen months - Jakarta, Singapore, Bali - is so close to the equator that the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM. The constant daylight in Paris has our biological rhythms confused. Instead of being ready for breakfast at 7 and ready to leave at 8, we eat breakfast at 8:30 and leave by 9:30, which means we arrive in Paris quite late around 11 AM.

After buying two umbrellas and a rain poncho for our daughter, we started our rain-filled day at my favorite spot in Paris - Montmartre, where you'll find the Basilica Sacre Couer (Basilica of the Sacred Heart). It is the highest spot in Paris and has one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture, in my opinion, anywhere in the world. I don't know what it was about religious orders in the pre-Enlightenment age, but they sure built some elaborate places of worship (see Borobudur and Prambanan for Buddhist and Hindu examples). To get to the basilica, you have to climb several flights of stairs. A tiring proposition when you are walking solo. A full challenge when you are pushing a stroller, and trying to stay dry.

Eight years ago, this is where I proposed to my wife. We took a picture of the result of that question in the same spot as the proposal.

We left the Sacre Coeur around 12:30 and walked through the adjoining village of shops and local artisans. The small streetscapes around Montmartre represent what people who visit Paris fall in love with. You feel like you have just walked back in time to the Renaissance, yet can find all the comforts of the modern era. My wife bought herself a scarf. We laughed when she read the tag. Seems she came all the way to Paris to buy a scarf made in Indonesia.

At the base of the hill is Paris' red light district, and the Moulin Rouge, made famous by the movie starring my favorite actress, Nicole Kidman. There was also a street with the same name as my daughter.

We ate lunch with my friend in a small cafe by the Eiffel Tower. After lunch, the rain had stopped so we took a brief walk by Paris' most famous tourist attraction, and stopped at playground in the nearby park so our daughter could have some play time after walking so much. We knew she needed it when she asked, after spending so many days just walking around the streets, "what do we keep looking for?"

Leaving the Eiffel Tower, we walked the few blocks to the Hotel d'Invalides, where there is a military museum and Napoleon's tomb. The tomb is nothing much to look at, but the building itself is remarkable. In fact, much of Paris is just remarkable to regard. On my first trip to Paris, which I did by myself when I had very little spending money, I spent the entire 10 days just walking the city admiring the buildings (save for a few visits to some museums).

Our original plan was to walk from Hotel d'Invalides to the Luxembourg Gardens, but the rain returned while our niece was viewing Napoleon's tomb, so we decided to just return to the hotel instead.