Fête de la musique

I am so behind on things I want to blog about, ah!! In no particular order I'm going to list them off so I don't forget:

Climbing the Eiffel tower
4th of July with the kiddos
Summer plans with the family
Cafe oz
Dating/relationships in Paris (don't worry, no experience in this regard, just funny things I've noticed)
French fashion
French culture

But before I get to all of those things I have to first talk about the fetes de la musique.

This is one magical day in Paris that is just full of music. Each year on the summer solstice, all of France is overtaken by music. There are huge concerts everywhere, but what's more is that every corner you turn has a band playing music. To really explain what this night was like, I have to tell you about my night.

I met Siobhan and Natalie out at odeon at about 9pm and it was still super light out. We split some little aperitifs like vine tomatoes, cheese things and had a bottle of wine while we were sitting on the street listening to a cover band play in front of a little pharmacy. The streets were so crowded that cars just reversed down the street because there was no way they could pass through. From there we decided to stop in at wos, so we walked the 10-15 minute walk through the immensely crowded streets, stopping to listen to each band we found (think one per block) for a while we got intensely distracted by a beatles cover band that had taken over the sidewalk in front of a bank. Eventually we make it to wos, say hello to our friends and decide to keep moving.

As we walk down the street we meet the guy who owns the bakery next to wos and he proceeds to introduce us to the guy who owns the restaurant on the corner next to wos, the restaurant owner invites us to come to his restaurant for a little bit and gives us a table on the sidewalk. We sit down and then to the right we see a small crowd so we go to see who/what is playing. Two brothers one 11 and one 13 are hooked up with their electric guitars and are singing French pop songs while the crowd is pretty much made up of their families and then us. We become completely obsessed with these two boys and how adorable they are so we stay and dance for everrrr. We end up being obnoxious and cheering at the end before Siobhan gives a casual 'play sweet home alabama' shout to them and we go back to the restaurant. 5 minutes pass and we hear the unmistakable first two measures of sweet home Alabama

We sprint out of our chairs and go dance like idiots. They finish and start to pack up and finally we decide we have to talk to these kids. Their band name was 'les cacktus' the cactus (no idea the English plural for cactus but I think I'm on the right track)

They pack up and then the baker offers us free food from his bakery so he brings us 6 of his best pastries an we sit at this restaurant, eat these delicious pastries and listen to music for the rest of the night.

It was absolutely fantastic, i can't even begin to describe how cool it was to see musicians everywhere from famous bands in the opera to bands just getting started and selling their CDs I two brothers playing on a side street for their parents and a bunch of rowdy Americans.