Fête de la Musique

This day started out with a little bit of Islam!

I've been hearing great things about this mosque in Paris which is supposed to be pretty spectacular. I heard that it has beautiful gardens, tea rooms, and even a restaurant inside. The fact that Monica's two friends who were visiting at the time (Firdowsa and Nafisa) happen to be Muslim, gave us the opportunity to visit it finally with people who could explain what we saw.

The outside looks very clean and simple, but with touches of Arabic architecture.

But the inside is amazing! The gardens were gorgeous, with plants and fountains everywhere.





While we were there, Firdowsa told Monica and I some interesting things about the religion, too, such as why some women wear the headscarf and others don't, and about some of the rituals they have.

We couldn't go inside the mosque since they were praying at the time, but I was impressed enough with the gardens.

After visiting the mosque, we all went to Montmartre in the north to enjoy some of the Fête de la Musique!

The Fête de la Musique is basically a city-wide music festival, where all day long, there's music being played all over Paris. This can take the form of live bands playing music from their home countries (I heard Brazilian and South American music), or even just a van parked on the street with enormous speakers, blasting electro and trans to passersby. No matter what the style of music, it was all played outside and it resulted in TONS of people wandering around listening, glasses of alcohol in hand, and an overall feeling of the city coming alive!



So we decided to grab a quick bite from one of the many barbecues set up for the festival and go sit on the steps below Sacré-Cœur to enjoy the music there.

And take a cute picture or two, of course.

They were playing Arabic music by where we were sitting...

Nice belly-dancing!

Like I said, the streets were packed!

Here's some more music:

And while we were walking around, we passed the Moulin Rouge! One of these days I'm going to a show.

Out of all the music, I think my favorite was actually the bizarre-sounding electro music from the vans parked on the street close to where I live. Maybe it was the people dancing nearby- they had multi-colored mohawks and studded jewelry- it was definitely something you don't see often in Paris.

But I can appreciate any kind of music. Or at least make a decent effort.

Bisous XOXO