Last night in Paris
Saturday 5 July
Our mission tonight is to find a nice little French cafe to have our dinner. We left around 8.30pm. There were plenty of cafes down the road from the hotel, they all had seating outside and I thought it would be fun to sit and watch how the French spend an evening. I have noticed they are openly affectionate towards each other, generally a greeting for a woman is a kiss on both cheeks, for a man it's a handshake, although I have seen rapturous embraces by both sexes! It wasn't long before we passed a nice cafe with a jazz singer tinkling the ivories, it sounded so nice that we went no further.
The sky was looking a little threatening so we chose to sit inside. We ordered our meal and a bottle of Rosè from Bordeaux and sat back and listened/watched this lovely jazz singer.
The sign said that they were having a jazz band at 9.30, so we ate our meal very slowly and ordered Cafe Gourmand (a shot of coffee and usually 4 or 5 different tastes of desert), so by the time we had finished that and our bottle of wine the jazz band had arrived. Kisses all round of course, lots of too-ing and fro-ing and 20's style dresses and feather boas. And while all this is going on our piano playing singer just carries on and not a word of thanks or a round of applause. I felt quite sorry for her, I should have clapped, but, well, a foreigner in a foreign land and all that.... So she packed up, put the piano lid down and the jazz band manager came over to talk to her which was nice.
Next thing the jazz singer and band are in full swing and she leaves quietly by the front door. Don't know why I'm getting a bit sentimental about this, she was so good she was probably going off to her next gig.
So that was our very French evening, one to remember....... til next time..?
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