One of my favourite movies is Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulin (released in English under the title Amélie). It was the movie Eric and I saw on our visit to France in 2001. At the time we were looking for something to do and stumbled across a movie theatre not far from Montparnasse. We asked the person in the ticket booth for a recommendation on the movies showing. This was when we first met Amélie. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it is a must rent/download. Whatever you do, just see it.
On our recent trip to Paris with the girls, I started to get some ‘Amélie’ flashbacks! During our daily walks, I started snapping photos from the different locations I remember from the film.
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| On the steps of Sacre-Coeur |
Sacre-Coeur and the carousel at the bottom of the funiculaire. The girls got to ride on the carousel after our visit to Sacre-Coeur one Sunday morning. We also stopped to admire the busker ‘statues’ on the steps of Sacre-Coeur.
Making our way back down the hill towards the metro, we walked by several tourist shops and boutiques. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and there were lots of people out and about.
(On a side note, this particular Sunday was the final day of the Tour de France. We had weighed the possibility of making our way to les Champs-d'Élysées to watch the end of the race. However, we quickly (and wisely) decided to avoid the area.)
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| La carousel à Sacre-Coeur (Montmartre) |
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| Canal Saint-Martin |
Canal Saint-Martin. In the movie, Amélie is skipping stones on the canal. She obviously got special permission to be on the locks (for filming purposes) because one is really not allowed to cross the canal other than on the footbridges (and not on the locks like Amélie). We had a nice Sunday afternoon walk down the canal. One thing that is very different in France is that stores do close – daily around lunch hour. Many stores are closed on Sundays and quite a few close for the month of August for holidays. For us, this meant a limit to the shopping we could do – a good thing for the pocketbook! We did stop to watch the tour boats go through the locks.
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| Canal Saint-Martin |
Amélie travels to Blois
On our last morning in Blois (Loir-et-Cher), we stopped to have our morning café crème outside the local bar-tabagie-café near the hotel. As I waited for Kyra, who was using the WC, I happened to look up and take in the whole scene from inside the shop. The two ladies were behind the counter. One was drying some coffee cups and putting them away next to the espresso machine. The other was closer to the door at the cash register, with her display of cigarettes behind her! Even though it was not even in Paris, it was still quite funny to get an Amélie movie flash!
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