June 13th ~ Paris : MonMartre & Sacre-Coeur Part 1

Chris got up early @ 7.30 am to catch up on e mails & weather forecast, by piggybacking the campsite restaurant’s wifi at sunrise on the banks of the Seine. Quite sunny with high cloud. Conflicting forecasts, with the BBC saying “hot and sunny all day”, and Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com) saying “cloudy all day”. Good news that Mum has come through her operation well, albeit a bit groggy.


Off to catch the train to Charles de Gaulle Etoile and metro to Pigalle where there was a there was a thriving Sunday Puces (flea) market . There were numerous book stalls and bought 4 French children’s books for Mum to help with conversation. Walked up into MonMartre, where a few “3 card trick” Con-men using 3 discs, one with a white spot underneath, doing a roaring trade. One con man tried to give Jackie 100 euros , with a girl encouraging her to bet 50 euros to win the 100 euros – it was a fascinating scam, - some people bet, convinced where the spot was, and inevitiably lost. He would even leave cigarette ash on the disc where the white spot clearly was, to encourage unwary punters to bet, only to find it wasn’t there when he turned the disc over. The only way we think it worked was by trickery, and that the white disc could somehow be detatched from one disc and reattached to another when he shuffled the discs.

Exploring Montmartre, we found the "Love Wall" with the words "I Love You" in 311 languages. On up to Sacre Coeur.