Cobblestones

During our stay in Paris, we have been living in Montmartre, an area of Paris with a long and famous history for being the home of many famous artists and the location of exotic nightclubs such as the Moulin Rouge.

Today it is a beautifully preserved area of Paris that maintains the look and feel of its historic past.

One of the elements that contributes to this is the use of cobblestones – everywhere in Montmartre!

Cobblestones are used for sidewalks – as shown at the left. So it is advisable to wear good sturdy shoes when walking there to cope with the uneven surfaces.

Cobblestones are used for streets.

They lend charm to the stores and restaurants that line the roads.

I don’t think the tourists pay much attention to the fact they are walking on cobblestones, but when you live here, you become aware of the quality they lend to the ‘Butte’, as Montmartre is called.

Without the cobblestones, the neighbourhood would not feel as if you have stepped back in time to the era of Picasso, Renoir. Monet and van Gogh. Many times I have turned a corner on a street here and felt as if I had stepped into a painting from one of these famous artists.

One of our favourite streets is located just a couple of blocks from our flat. Not only does it have cobblestones on the street, but the walls on both sides are cobblestones!

You can see the moss growing on the stones on both sides! Vegetation has to fight for space to grow in Paris; so the trees, bushes and vines grow wherever they can get a foothold. I wonder how many of them survive with so little soil, but they do.

The arch on the left is a garage. Moments before I took this photo, a car drove out of the garage and headed down the street.

So do cobblestone streets ever need to be repaired? If so, how do they do it?

Well, it seems they do need to be fixed at times, and we saw an example of what they do right on our neighbourhood. They do exactly what we do when we are laying cement pads for a sidewalk or a patio.

You can see in these photos that they have taken up the stones and are laying down a bed of sand before they line the stones up again. They probably then fill sand in between all the stones, but we weren’t around when they performed that step.

So now you have seen a little of our neighbourhood. We are very glad that we chose a flat in this area because it is not as busy as some of the main areas of Paris. It also feels more like a small village, not a major city.

And where do we live in this little village? We live in a flat on rue Gabrielle on the left side at the far end of the street in this photo. Note the cobblestones? Another point about cobblestone streets is that you can hear the traffic easily. No possibility of an electric car sneaking up on you (if there were such a thing here.) The tires rumble distinctly as they go by.

This street is just around the corner from one of the busiest little tourist areas in Paris – Place du Tertre.

This square is full of artists who set up their easels and invite tourists to buy their paintings or hire them to draw a portrait on the spot. The shops are full of souvenirs of the time when Montmartre was the mecca of modern art. Even today, L’Espace Salvador Dali, a museum dedicated to the works of Salvador Dali, is located just around the corner.

Despite all of this tourist activity, our street is very quiet. Our flat is on the first floor (second floor in North American terms) and we watch the tourists wander by as they read their maps looking for the way down to the centre of Montmartre.

Just to show you that we did have a little snow in Paris this winter, I have included this photo that I took from the window of our flat in December. The car is delicately making its way down the slope towards rue Gabrielle. The square in the background looks much greener these days despite the fact that temperatures are still cooler than normal for Paris.

Spring is late coming to Paris this year. Maybe it’s time to head home to BC!