The hills are incarnate with symphonic melodies!

Also, I have to start marking the things in this book that I want to do. Like visit the Musee des Beaux Arts because of the Auden poem. It's in northeast France.

Oh, and I definitely want to go to Troyes, because of the famous Chertien (sp) de Troyes who wrote the Lancelot and some other medieval romances. Also, there's totally a chapel built by the Knights Templar in the 13th century in Metz. Wow, just the pictures of some of the churches are amazing. Like La Madeline in Paris (when I think of "La Madeline", I think of a restaurant by the same name)... and Versailles... holy cow...

But this quote from a chapter on Paris:
Many of Paris' famous sights are slightly out of the city center. Monmartre, long a mecca for artists and writers, still retains much of its bohemian atmosphere...

*Christian voice* "I first came to Paris one year ago ... it was 1899, the summer of love. I knew nothing of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler, or Satine. The world had been swept up in a bohemian revolution, and I had traveled from London to be a part of it. On the hill near Paris was the village of Montmartre. It was not, as my father said, 'a village of sin', but the center of the bohemian revolution! Musicians, painters, writers -- they were known as 'the children of the revolution'. Yes, I had come to live a peniless existence! I had come to write about truth, beauty, freedom, and that which I believed in above all things -- love. ["ALways this riDIculous obSEssion with LOVE!"] There was only one problem -- I'd never been in love! Luckily, right at that moment, an unconscious Argentinian fell through my roof. He was quickly joined by a dwarf dressed as a nun."

Haha! Sorry. But! Get this ...

Built in 1885, the Moulin Rouge was turned into a dance hall as early as 1900. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec immortalized the wild and colourful cancan shows here in his poster and drawing of his famous dancers such as Jane Avril...

Toulouse was real!!!!!! I wonder if he was a midget. Also --

The steep butte (hill) of Montmartre has been associated with artists for 200 years. Theodore Gericault and Camille Corot came here at the start of the 19th cntury, and in the 20th century Maurice Utrillo immortalized the streets in his works. Today, the street artists thrive predominantly on the tourist trade, but much of the area still preserves its villagey, sometimes seedy, prewar atmosphere. The name of the area is ascribed to martyrs tortured and killed in the area around AD 250, hence mons martyrium.

That ... is ... so ... cool. My goal is go to to Montmartre (have a picture taken next to the sign to prove that I've been there, i.e. this) and then buy something (a painting?) from one of the local bohemian arists. Also, I'm going to bring something Satineish and pose with it in front of the Moulin Rouge. I want my picture in front of the Moulin Rouge, but I don't want to go in ... as it's uh, Vegasy and gross. But I'll do my Satine impression ... "the French are glad to die for love, they delight in fighting duels... but I prefer a man who lives, and gives expensive jewels."

Also, there are both stores of Tiffany AND Cartier in Paris.

I'm heaven. And I'm not even there yet.

Totally alone.

Envy me, Tyler Whetstone!!! ;D

...and I am a material girl.