Paris – Friday

I feel like I've been giving the impression here that we're hardly doing anything and have been having a very relaxed holiday. It may seem so but the reality is the complete opposite - so much so that we all felt like having a day off to hang out around home and do not a lot. So we did. After a big sleep in and a lazy morning the guys headed out into the neighbourhood to find a local mosque to say their Friday prayers and Hisham's sister and I hung out at home and, well, rested. I can't even remember what we did that morning so it must have been pretty quiet. What I do know is that we had a huge Middle Eastern breakfast which has been a staple of our daily diet this whole time of travelling with Hisham's family (I'm writing this near the end of our first Sweden stay), and it was delicious. No photos because I'm always so hungry I just gobble it down but I promise there will be some in the coming days.

The place we were staying in Paris looked to be quite close to the Seine river and I had been wanting to check it out so we went for a walk there in the afternoon. I was expecting to see a few shops, a ferry terminal, maybe a market place with a busker or two. It ended up being a semi-abandoned industrial area with nobody around and not a lot going on. We couldn't resist posing for a few photos anyway:

Later that evening we had begun our second game of Trex when all of a sudden we heard the loud sound of many drums beating outside our window. We all rushed to see what was going on and it seems that in the park across from our apartment building there is a stage where drum groups practice. I guess we'll never know if this was a regular occurrence or a once off but it was pretty spectacular. A few of us headed downstairs to get close to the action and try to figure out what the occasion was.

This photo does absolutely no justice to the incredible experience of being up close to such a powerful auditory event.

I took some video of the drummers too but I dropped my phone into a bowl of crepe mixture a few weeks ago and it recovered extremely well except for the unfortunate result that the speakers, and evidently the microphone, are muffled. Here it is anyway so you can get some idea of how amazing these drummers were.

Adam loved it! He was clapping his hands and hopping around, dancing to the beat of this beautiful music. We all got into the groove a little actually although I don't think any of us would admit it was for anything other than to encourage Adam :)

Earlier in the week Hisham had been telling me about how much the French like to Protest and his hopes for seeing such a protest in action. We joked about it often in the previous days but now it was happening before our very eyes - sort of. A guy made his way through the crowd that had gathered to watch the drummers and was handing out these flyers:

Marchons! Google tells me this means walk but I have a pretty good idea that they're planning a protest. I really wanted to know what it said so typed the whole thing into Google Translate. Turns out the mayor 'Madame Goueta' is shutting down a health centre which does radiologie, cardiologie, mammographie, etc., and the people are Not. Happy. Solution: PROTEST!

Adam playing with his cousins back at the apartment after all the excitement. 

Rest day over: tomorrow we head to the touristy part of the river.