Paris (3): the Moulin Rouge and the Sex Shop District

Hello and welcome to everyone!

I hope you are enjoying your summer 2017.

The Moulin Rouge and the Sex Shop District

After having been to the Sacré-Cœur, it was time to continue getting to know more places inside the city of Paris so I, together with my friend, went to the area where the Moulin Rouge is located. When we arrived, we had to ask a few people to help us find our way around so luckily, this it did not take as long to get there compared to what we thought it would. Before arriving at the Moulin Rouge, we walked through an avenue that had a bit of innuendo about it: it had lots of sex shops with their windows wide open. For this reason, my friend and I decided to look into all these shop windows until we dared to make the trip inside to see all the hilarious things there.

Inside the shop we could see every type of video covers, as well as costumes for women such as a rabbit, student, doctor, policewoman and others... We also could see some sex toys for couples and a section for the LGBT+ community, which also had videos another other things to trigger people's imaginations.

- The street where we found all the different sex shops. At the end of this street basically leads directly to the Moulin Rouge -

As we were there during the morning shift, there were not many people looking at the things we found there, instead there was a large group of people on the pavement between us and the road that the Moulin Rouge was on, most people were taking photos.

- View of the main façade of the Moulin Rouge, found in the Red Light District of Paris -

The Moulin Rouge, that is to say "the red windmill" in Castilian, can be found with red flowerpots in the entrance, it has an area to buy tickets on the right hand side, as well as its main door on the left.

There is a film that maybe many of you have seen, but in my case I had never seen it before, I only saw the images found on the ticket office window that show the popular performances at the moment. This place is famous for being one of the busiest cabaret locations inside Paris, it was built in 1889 and was designed by a Spaniard called Josep Oller.

The Moulin Rouge is one of those places where all the huge artists of Paris have gone to be able to give their presentations inside small, intimate rooms that allow them to have better 1:1 contact with the public. It was because of this that this area was also known for all of the famous writers who had visited, like Oscar Wilde. During its lifetime it has also been visited by people like Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli and Ives Montand, among others as well.

All the splendour and glamour of the Moulin Rouge occurred during the period in time known as the "La Belle Époque", "The Beautiful Era". One of the people closely related to the Moulin Rouge was the French man Hanri de Tolouse-Lautrec. Nowadays, they continue to do shows which are very popular and the truth is, we didn't buy a ticket because they were really expensive. It would be totally worthwhile just to see the outside of the building, or maybe the lobby and see the things inside there.

From here, we started to walk towards the area where you can find a whole corner of a street that is full of some of the most well-known bars in the city, due to this area being used as a set for the movie Amelie, one of the best French films that I have ever seen due to the subtle melodies in the film.

When I was at home, I remember that my sister had a CD by Yann Tiersen and during one free afternoon, I started to listen to it out of curiosity and I fell in love with the music. It was my main companion as I went on my journey to University as I listened through my headphones. Years later, when I recently watched the film, it reminded me of this stage in my life.

- View of one of the entrances of the Moulin Rouge -

I hope that you have enjoyed this little post about the things you can find next to the Moulin Rouge and the sex shops there too. It's not much more than a little walk through these places to be able to discover more of Paris' secrets, a romantic city with small districts that have so much character.

In the next post I will talk about my visit to the Amelie bar and the things you can find next to its walls, this afternoon was so productive, time was passing so fast that every hour was like one second, and that meant we were having a great time visiting Paris.

Thank you everyone! I'm sending you good vibes from here and I hope you enjoy Paris and discover everything possible! Until next time!

There are so many more things to say about my trip to Paris so I will see you in my next post so that we can do the same thing. I am in France for almost a week and the capital has so many things to offer without the need to spend much money!

Many thanks to those who read this post, I hope that it has been useful!

I hope you have a marvelous day like always, until next time!

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