Le Moulin Rouge

I had hoped that today's visit to the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre would give us an occasion to link arms onstage and perform an improvisational rendition of the can-can, with Paul in the middle, but sadly this did not come to pass. Instead we spent our time listening to a nice French man tell us all about the history of the dance hall.

The windmill that sits atop the Moulin Rouge today is old, but not original to the building-- the first one burned down sometime after the turn of the century. Neither of them were ever functional, but windmills had become a symbol of Montmartre back in the area's village days, when several of them dotted the landscape.

We went inside and met up with our guide, who debriefed us on the history of the Moulin Rouge. It was in French so I didn't catch all of what he said, but he told us that the Nicole Kidman film is actually pretty historically accurate. The giant elephant was real, for example. He also pointed out a bunch of the original advertising posters for the dance hall, most of which were created by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Erin in front of the ballroom.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the stage, but here are some seats in the audience. Our guide told us that the Moulin Rouge basically invented the concept of a dinner theater, and the hall has something like 860 chairs and a bunch of tables for those who elect the super pricey dinner-and-a-show. Without the frills you can see a show for under a hundred euro, but it's closer to two hundred if you want food and champagne. Some girls were onstage practicing while we were there, which was pretty interesting. The guide told us that the Moulin Rouge employs dancers of many nationalities, including Americans, but that the best-represented group were actually Australians.

We went into the dressing room too, which had a bunch of crazy feathered costumes and headdresses, but I figured I probably wasn't allowed to take pictures.

After the field trip I walked home and on the way I ducked into Laduree for a macaroon. Finally, one goal accomplished! The others have been surprisingly difficult to achieve (the Musee Fragonard, for instance, turned out not even to be in Paris. Liars, the Parisian museum website staff). But it sounds like we're going to the Catacombs this weekend, so that'll be one more item down.

My macaroon matches my scarf! It was unintentional.

After the long line of elegant French dames ahead of me had made their selections, I ordered a lone raspberry macaroon. Let me just say I'm glad it took me this long to finally try one, because if I had discovered them earlier I would be dead broke and weigh nine hundred pounds.

We will end with this picture of a store that had Star Wars mannequins in the window, which I took for Diane's viewing pleasure:

This is almost as great as the Harry Potter store in the 6th, where you can buy $50 reproductions of things like the Marauder's Map and every major character's wand.

Goal: accomplish three more of my goals before updating again.