La Goutte d'Or en Fête

July 2nd, 2018

Our days are filled with thoughts of the logistics of our move back (more thoughts than actions at this point), finishing up projects at work, and fitting in a few new restaurants, sites, and activities.  We've also had a lot of visitors to join us in these activities.  Our good friends Chris and Liz are in town.  They have spent two previous sabbaticals in Paris and gave us tremendously helpful advice about all kinds of things before we came.  It has been great to see them and compare our experiences to theirs.  

A series of advertising tiles at the entrance of the ceramics market that gives some indication of the breadth of styles

Another guest, Allison, has also been in town.  She is a good friend of Caroline's from high school.  She spent a lot of time hanging around our house during high school, and we were always happy to have her.  We have enjoyed showing her around our neighborhood and taking her to some places that are a little off the beaten path.  Yesterday, we shopped in a fantastic ceramics market which had really beautiful and varied pieces, ranging from practical kitchenwares to avant garde art pieces, from the staid to the morose to the elegant to the whimsical.  The quality and variety of the pieces there was really outstanding.  After that, we visited the Grand Mosque of Paris.  I had been meaning to go for a while but, I have to say that I found it underwhelming.  (Lovely, but after a whole week in Morocco, not so impressive.)  

Last night, we decided to attend a cultural festival in north Paris called La Goutte d'Or en Fête, followed up with south Indian food in the area near Gare du Nord.  (La Goutte d'Or is the neighborhood that hosted the festival, a bit northwest of Gare du Nord.)  Jade, Kate's and my French tutor, suggested we go because her boyfriend Ameth Sissokho is the lead singer in the Sora Yaa Band, which was performing there.  It was great---an interesting mix of musical styles and instruments combining for some fun and catchy music.  There was an instrument that sounded like steel drums but was some kind of stringed instrument.  We'd never heard a stringed instrument like it before.  And they threw in an accordion, too.

Jade

and the band