These are excerpts from the Big Honey Dog blog – by Honey the Great Dane, who recounts what her humans did when they went on a Big Flying Machine and flew to visit the faraway place called France. These are their adventures in the French capital…
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After a ‘wild night’ at the Moulin Rouge 😉 , my humans and their mummies got up early the next morning to tackle one of Paris’s biggest challenges: the queue for the Louvre Museum! 😀
Actually, Hsin-Yi had managed to “pre-order tickets” (in fact, she got tickets for most of the things they planned to do – like the Moulin Rouge – back in January, 8 months ago, because she knew they were going in summer – in the middle of the busiest time – and everything would be booked out!) – so my humans didn’t have to join the huge queue to buy the tickets – just the huge queue to show the tickets to get into the Louvre Museum – ha! ha!
Well – finally – they got in! And it was certainly worth the wait!
This was my humans’ favourite room in the Louvre: a huge atrium filled with sunshine & statues!
Look at this sculpture of the Greek hero, Hercules, fighting a serpent…if you half closed your eyes, you could almost see them springing to life!
But of course, the most famous thing that everyone comes to the Louvre to see is the painting of a smiling lady called the Mona Lisa.
Except…oh! there were SO many people trying to see her, it was like fighting a war and hanging on for your life, as you were pushed and shoved and squashed in the crowds!
Hmm…it was not a very nice experience being horribly squashed (especially if you’re a very small human, like Hsin-Yi! 😉 ) and my humans were a bit disappointed – they said it was hardly worth it and a lot easier just to see her in a poster or a book…or the museum sign – ha! ha!
Well, after that my humans and their mummies were absolutely knackered – and they had only seen a tiny part of the many collections in the museum! Of course, the Louvre is HUGE HUGE HUGE and it would take you days – maybe weeks – to see everything properly so I guess my humans will just have to go back another time to see the rest! 😛
But the poor exhausted mummies barely had time for a quick rest back at the hotel before Hsin-Yi rushed them out again for another thing she’d planned: dinner at Montmartre!
Montmartre is a really beautiful part of old Paris, up on a hill, with wonderful views back over the city. It is full of gorgeous little winding cobble-stone streets, bursting with shops & cafes…all in the shadow of the majestic Sacré-Coeur Basilica…
Montmartre is also famous for its very, very, VERY steep staircases – fact, there are entire streets in Montmartre which are made up of just stairs!!!
Dinner was booked for 7:30pm and they were already a bit late but Ma-Ma just could not resist looking in some of the shops! 😀 You know, Ma-Ma has the Shopping Disease – she had not done any shopping for 2 days and she was getting itchy fingers!! 😛
Montmartre was Hsin-Yi’s favourite part of Paris because it was full of such wonderful ‘character’ and atmosphere – she said it was like walking through a storybook, back in time.
Many, many movies have been made in Montmartre – such as Amélie, La Môme (La Vie En Rose) and Moulin Rouge…
…and it was also the place where many famous painters and artists lived and worked, such as Picasso, Matisse, van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and of course, Renoir who painted lots of famous pictures about life in that part of Paris.
In fact, one of the places that Renoir spent a lot of his time was in a beautiful old windmill called Le Moulin de la Galette – which used to be a cabaret with dancers like the Moulin Rouge, in those days – but today is just a posh restaurant…
…and that’s where Hsin-Yi had booked a table for dinner!
Hsin-Yi wished they could stay in Montmartre longer – late into the night – but everyone was very tired and they had to get back to bed because tomorrow was going to be a BIG day! Why?
Stay tuned to find out! 😉
(to be continued…)
ps. Check out my Mona Lisa impression…Don’t I look all serene and mysterious? 😛
