I can sleep when I'm dead!

Today I went to Montmartre. And it was amazing.

But first, let me back this story up.

As it turns out, my ability to run on little-to-no sleep is pretty darn useful when it comes to making time to explore other countries. After a kind of ridiculous night involving one normal bottle of wine, one economy-sized bottle of wine, pudding glasses, and Club Mix (otherwise known as "Jackie is incredibly popular among French men"), I got back to my room at about 4:30am.

At 10:00am, I woke up to the heavy beats of terrible Euro-techno.

My next door neighbor must have brought a subwoofer to Cité - I have no idea how else his music gets that LOUD. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to tell him to turn it down, given that my grasp of French is pretty poor. I'm thinking of launching my own aural assault to counter his music, but we'll see how that goes.

But despite the lack of sleep, Montmartre was AMAZING from the moment we stepped out of the metro. I wish I had a picture of this, but I bought a ridiculously long ham/egg/tomato baguette/sandwich for 3 euro. Granted, the sandwich didn't sit too well with the many, many steps we climbed to get to the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur:

However, a wonderful surprise was waiting at the top of the stairs:

I'm 99% sure that those funny little tiled things are SPACE INVADERS, which fills me with so very much glee! A little to the left of the space invaders was Sacre-Coeur itself:
And on the steps of Sacre-Coeur was a HUGE crowd listening to a very talented singer/guitarist play Beatles songs. No joke, this guy was good:

We wandered around Montmartre and saw artists in action:
And lots of charming shops:
We attempted to find the Moulin Rouge afterwards, but ended up doing some heavy-duty shopping instead. Montmartre, it turns out, is filled with small shops that offer more-than-reasonable prices. For instance, one of my friends bought a pair of boots for 15 euro, while another bought a pair of boots (that look almost identical to my $60 Chinese Laundry boots) for 20 euro. Hours of shopping - and not wanting to wander the red light district in the dark - made us abandon the Moulin Rouge quest for now, but believe me, we will be firmly planted in front of the Moulin Rouge within the month!

For dinner, we headed over to Chinatown. And, let me tell you, Chinatown is HUGE and rife with HUGE supermarkets! Ah, it reminds me of home =) I had an epic amount of pho tonight at this little restaurant:
And have been chilling out in my building - swathed in fleece and comfort - since coming back home. The only thing I regret is not buying a bottle of wine for tonight, but given yesterday night's activities, I suppose it's a good thing that my liver is getting a break!

With that, I'm finally going to bed. Bonne nuit!

xoxo,
Danica