Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi?

Ok. In case you haven't noticed, yes, I'm clearly that hopeless romantic type that loves all things Paris, including the music, the food, the people, the history, and the endless cute things that surround my home and office of my Paris.

Just today on a long trip to Sacramento I listened to three soundtracks: Les Miserables; Phantom of the Opera; and in case you can't guess, Moulin Rouge.  I LOVE musicals! On the subject of Moulin Rouge, how beautiful were the sets and Nicole Kidman's costumes and makeup?! Love it all.


The first time I went to Moulin Rouge, my friends and I spent the money and watched the S U P E R long show. Lots of bare tops and old school Las Vegas type waltzing.  Sadly we had no luck finding the Chippendales version of this show anywhere in Paris and were scoffed at by taxi drivers and guys we met in Montmartre clubs who had never heard of such a thing.  Qui qui, Paris is missing out.

To top off my strange story, one of my travel mates INSISTED on asking almost every garçon that we met if menage a trois was a 'cultural thing that all Parisians did?'  Ugh.  In the future, my tip of the day is to avoid the show and the expensive unappetizing dinner at Moulin Rouge and hit the local bars.  We found, that if they have a juke box, background  music playing, or a DJ, you are more than likely to have dancing!  I will tell more stories later of our Montmartre adventures! I took this gorgeous picture of Moulin Rouge last year - June 2015:

Meantime, here is some interesting history on the Moulin Rouge from moulinrouge.com: On October 6, 1889, at the foot of Montmartre,  a new music hall opens, Moulin Rouge! On the side of the Place Blanche, the public discovers this extravagant place: a huge dance floor, mirrors everywhere, a gallery where he is the last of slumming chic, a garden with a huge elephant and rides donkey to amuse the ladies. Crazy atmosphere where the show takes place as well on stage as in the audience: aristocrats and cap thugs come together in a joyful complicity, crews uptown and little people of Paris having fun together in the most total euphoria. 


How amazing would it have been to attend opening night of the Moulin Rouge?! The Moulin Rouge means, The Red Windmill. The Moulin Rouge was inaugurated on 6th of October 1889 by Joseph and Charles Zidler.
French painter and lithographer; Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent customer at Moulin Rouge. His color lithographs depict actors, music-hall singers, prostitutes, and waitresses from the 1890s in Montmartre. He also created the Moulin Rouge series in 1894.