I realize I’m likely to lose some readers by saying this, but I’ve never really been a fan of Montmartre. Whenever anyone lets me know of an event or a gathering up in the 18th, I have a tendency to bemoan the distance. It’s not all that close to where I live and even a schlep to get to from where I work so when Mr. Cheeseland and I plan where we’ll go strolling on a weekend or where to have dinner with friends, it’s never farther north than the 9th (bottom of rue des martyrs). Call us arrondissement snobs if you will, but we only ever went up the hill when we had friends visiting Paris for the first time. To give them the official tour of everything in the guidebooks – from the Café des Deux Moulins (from Amélie) to Sacré Coeur and its surroundings.  

Recently I came across a post by fellow expat blogger Anne of Just Another American In Paris where she described her reservations about Montmartre. I knew very well that the neighborhood (if you can even call it that, it’s more of a village in itself) was much more than a cheesy sketch artists hangout, but I understand what she means. Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the 18th a bit more in the last several months and have felt charmed by what feels like an entirely different city. Now that friends of ours are living at Lamarck Caulaincourt, we have reason to make the trek. We had lunch with them this weekend and spent the end of the day, with its overbearing gray skies and pestering drizzle, roaming the cobblestone roads and marveling at the veritable houses and little shops that formed a much more pictoresque landscape than what I see out my window. 

We got our first real taste of the Sacre-Coeur-less Montmartre and we’re intrigued. I anticipate future trips with even more discoveries.