On May Day (May 1) lily of the valley is sold by vendors on the streets throughout Paris Saturday day 8 Saturday morning we packed and checked out of the Hotel Brighton, leaving our bags with the hotel. We traveled to Gare de Lyon to meet a train arriving from Besancon with Linda's niece, Aimee Thomas. Aimee is the first person we knew with whom we could share the excitement of just becoming engaged, and will always be special to me. We walked across the street to the Les Deux Savoies so Aimee could have coffee and we could plan our day of Paris Exploration. It was a national holiday (May Day) so the vast majority of things we might have done were closed.
We decided to start with a visit to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. After riding the Metro to the Montmartre, we walked up the streets to the highest point in Paris. Butte Montmartre is the hill that gave its name to this District of Paris. There was a large crowd enjoying the holiday and we had to carefully pick our way through the crowd, avoiding stepping on broken bottles from the previous night's parties, to join the line filing into the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. A mass was in progress, but the crowd touring just kept going, often being too loud. We quietly explored the sides of the building and gift shop, enjoying the sound of the mass as we looked around.
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