La Nuit Blanche

Paris had this big cultural event thing on Saturday night called La Nuit Blanche which basically meant that everyone went out and got drunk, went to art galleries in the middle of the night and could still get the Metro home.

After waiting in my flat all afternoon watching Poirot on Youtube for my boss to text me the time she wanted me to go round and give L an English lesson I gave up and decided to go and meet up with everyone and start the night’s activites….

We walked from my friends’ flat by the Louvre already a little bit inebriated down to Hotel de Ville via the random pick and mix and chicken baguette stands taking pictures of stuff as we walked along. I think it’s been the only time we could take pictures of Paris without looking like tourists. As we got to Hotel de Ville there was a huge queue by a London Bus for what looked like goody bags. A queue and a British icon in one place, how could us ex-pats refuse this taste of home? It turned out that we had to enter our email addresses and all we got was the bag but then again a canvas bag is always useful!

I managed to join in two different dance offs. The first was outside Hotel de Ville where Katharine and I joined in with loads of other people dancing to the band that was playing. The second was in Fontaine de Saint-Michel where these guys were doing street dance so Lizzie and I decided to hop in with them. Safe to say I was the worst dancer in both as per my usual standard but my dancing certainly wasn’t the weirdest part of the night…..

After picking up a broken chair from outside the Highlander, who very kindly let us in to go to the loo even though they were closed. I think they might have been a little disturbed by me knocking on the door saying “La toilette s’il vous plait!” We trundled along to this building which had some people going in. We weren’t really sure what it was but I don’t think we really cared. They security guards wouldn’t let us take the chair in but looked after it for us until we came out. It turned out that they were showing a video of a string quartet playing in helicopters flying over Paris which was surreal to say the least!

But the culture didn’t stop there as tried in vain to find a McDonalds open at 3am to no avail which was probably for the best in the long run. I obviously danced all the way home as I had been very badly singing A View to A Kill – Duran Duran in my head for most of the night.

Overall a pretty cultural night, well for me that is!