A "Warm" Welcome to Paris

We arrived in Paris around 9PM on Wednesday night. Because I knew it was going to be dark and getting late when we got there, I used some of my time on the train to map the route from the train station to our hotel. I was quite pleased to see that the path would take us by one of the Parisian sites Jason and John wanted to take a stroll by - the Moulin Rouge:

In fact, I was quite excited to inform them that we would not only pass it on our way to the room, but we would actually be staying right around the corner! At the time, none of us realized exactly what this meant, but we would soon learn...

While I was aware that the Moulin Rouge hosts topless dance performances, I also knew that it was a well known Paris site about which a Broadway musical (and subsequently a movie) was made. I've never seen either, but I assumed based on this very little knowledge of it that it must be a relatively "family friendly" kind of place. Well, it may be, but it is most definitely NOT in a family friendly kind of neighborhood...it turned out that we were staying in the heart of Paris' red light district. As we made the trek to our room, Jason and John were solicited by a good number of friendly women who just wanted them to "come have a look" inside their establishments. And let me tell you, there was no mistaking what went on in those establishments as larger-than-life graphic posters plastered all over the place left NOTHING to the imagination. In between these lovely places, were a good number of other seedy looking shops and restaurants.

So, there we were, making our way along Paris' finest strip when we finally came across the Moulin Rouge and just past it (at the very left of the picture above) the "street" that we were staying on. Only what we realized after elbowing our way through the line of people waiting to get in to the 10PM performance at the Moulin Rouge (a fight we subsequently repeated EVERY night), was that it wasn't actually a street at all - it was most definitely an alley. And, there to great us in the alley, under a light post, were two men relieving themselves (a sight we would subsequently see - and smell - sporadically during the rest of our stay)!

After all this, I only wish that I could have had a picture of the four of us - Jason and John chuckling quietly to themselves, trying to hide their amusement with the whole situation; me, absolutely mortified at the room that I had booked, and Terry, eyes about to pop out of her head! What a sight we must have been.

After some serious searching to figure out how to get in to our room, we finally made it. On the plus side, once inside, the accommodations were good and - due to the location - very affordable for Paris. As the following posts will demonstrate, we spent very little time in the room, but with a metro stop across the street and a place for four people to sleep, it ended up being a great base from which to explore Paris!