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…
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.
