Pics from class trip on Wednesday. Whoohoo.

So this would be a building, somewhat on the older side, with lots of ivy. On the edge of Montmartre, Boulevard Rochechouart. Quite near the hotel were we stayed the first week.

Sacré Couer, from the Bouelvard Rochechouart still.

Very touristy place, yes?

The class took the tram-whatsit-thingamajig up to the top, instead of the stairs.

Paris Invaders mosaic thingy. See here for details. Artsy type thingy, basically.

“Au Bon Vins.” Not sure if the French are much aware of Au Bon Pain, but to me at least this constituted punniness thereupon.

Not much to say about this one. Fun shop front, yes?

Pretty graffiti-style thing!

Again with the ivy.

Nice little variety of architecture maintaining a common tone overall.

I think this might be the only vineyard within the Paris city limits.

If you look carefully you can see the bird on one of the wooden posts. Would have gotten a closer picture, but my camera only zooms in so far.

Tourists photographing the Lapin Agile.

Place de Tertres. Apparently there’s a special organization that regulates artists’ use of this space — a roster every year of a few hundred, half of whom are present on any given day, each with a spot of 1m square. Or so said our student guides. I thought this was a bit excessive — them French and their regulating everything — but it seems that prior to this organization, the place was run by the mafia. Or something like that. At any rate the artists were aggressive towards passersby and so forth.

Now isn’t that a pretty door?

Tree thing in courtyard of restaurant.

Nice little cityscape, very 3-D and all that.

Flags: French, European Union, and Commune of Montmartre.

Church door, Église de St Pierre. Relatively recent — 1940s or so.

Another door of aforesaid church.

Pictures of inside of church, and the lovely decorations of the Place des Abbesses métro station, to be posted tomorrow.

I believe I forgot to mention, a few posts back, that the Ronde Infini des Obtinés ended a few days ago, after 1,007 hours of continuous walking. Or so said the Métro.

Oh, and remember how I mentioned a long while back that a disproportionate number of French panhandly-types have dogs with them? According to the same publication, that’s a deliberate tactic to encourage people to give money, dogs not particularly well cared-for, smuggled into the country, sold under the table for cash, so on. Which wouldn’t entirely surprise me, just because it seems improbable that so many homeless people would all have dogs with them. I’m not up to date on pet-ownership statistics for Paris, but it just seemed like the proportion of panhandlers with dogs was higher than the proportion of people with dogs overall.

In other news, it seems that a large portion of the French prison guards have gone on strike. Here’s a video of them facing off against the CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, riot police) — apparently they don’t let you embed it and I’m too lazy to try to work around that but it’s worth checking out, very dramatic. Like, things-are-on-fire kind of dramatic:

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