La Bellevilloise

We put our new workout clothes to use for the first time today by tackling our neighborhood hill in Montmartre. All it took was a couple of trips up and down the steps to Sacré Coeur and the neighborhood hills to work up a good sweat! We finally learned a little more about the lay of our land, including the location of the Montmartre cemetery and our proximity to the Pigalle neighborhood (red light district.) We are actually only about a 25 minute walk to the famous Moulin Rouge, which we plan to visit in the next couple of weeks.


After a Picard frozen dinner at home, we prepped for our journey to a placed called La Bellevilloise out in the 19th arrondissement. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect at this place because it seemed to have multiple venues within the venue. What we discovered upon our visit is that there is a restaurant on the main level, a terrace café on an upper level, and an exhibition hall/art gallery at the very top. There is a section for live performances in the back/center area, and then there is a club downstairs. Basically, you can have several different events happening simultaneously at the same time and evening, which explains why their web site is so confusing!

We arrived too late to justify seeing the live band, so we decided to wait in the restaurant for the club to open up. I began to see a HUGE line forming outside of the club, so I strategically waited until they had started letting people in to have Robert show the security people our receipt and ask to cut in line since we were already patrons. It worked!

Once inside, I was able to again secure a table right by the stage where a DJ was playing top 40 dance music. There was a bachelorette party right next to us, and series of guys would take turns trying to dance with the girls. We finally had to get up and do a little dancing ourselves as the music continued to pick and the people rolled in. In general, everyone was having a good time and despite the large crowd, it never got too packed or too difficult to get a drink. We had a great time but had to pull ourselves away early again to catch the Metro. This was definitely a fascinating venue though and we hope to return for another show!