Having Nanny Rigsby was quite lovely. He shopped and cooked and kept us in pastis. He entertained the baby (and me) and kept us informed regarding Hurricane Irene. The way he did this was by turning on the telly to BBC 1.

‘If they aren’t talking about it on BBC 1, then it doesn’t matter,’ he said. (!!)

We were marvelous tourists covering much of Paris together over the next 3 days. Some of the highlights:

Notre Dame

The Latin Quarter for a horrible lunch.

The Sorbonne

A tour of the interior of the Palais Garnier Opera House where mostly ballets are performed now.

Rigsby was not impressed, referring to it as ‘wedding cake’ architecture and saying things like, ‘you can barely get out the front door without getting covered in gold leaf.’

Heh heh.  It was fun going there with him (although I thought it was rather beautiful…shhhh).

We also walked to Montmartre from our apartment. At the top of Montmartre lies the fantastic landmark, the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

You can climb (which I did-with a baby-and a stroller-not sure how) many many stairs to get to the top of the hill where the Sacre-Coeur lies or you can take the Montmartre funicular which is a mash-up of a subway car and an elevator.

Once you get up there, there is a whole other tiny world next to the Sacre-Coeur where all the artists painted in the Place du Tertre and went to Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir.

I had no idea this was all hiding up here and I’d been there before. I thought Montmartre was just the town that lies on the hill leading to the Basilique. Hello? I had missed it all the last time I was there!!! It was full of little cafes, museums, and cemeteries.  It held beautiful, old, well appointed houses. I guess you could call some of them mansions.

It was a fantastic area to accidentally stumble upon.