Nuit Blanche, 5 Octobre 2013

Nuit Blanche directly translates to "White Night". Indirectly, it means the same thing as what we'd call an all-nighter. Nuit Blanche happens once a year in Paris (beginning in 2001) and it is a big all night long event of art, music, and food all throughout Paris. The metro runs later than usual, and everyone comes out to see the different projects in each neighborhood.

We started out by heading to Pont-Neuf to see the most interesting-sounding event around 6 - four violinists inside four helicopters. I don't know much more about it than that, but we didn't know what to expect so we wanted to check it out. It turned out to be pretty anticlimactic, as the violinists were shown on a large screen (which I couldn't see) and then we just got to see the four helicopters fly by us one time, after about an hour of waiting.
At 7, all the bells in the city ring, and people join in with bicycle bells, hand bells, there was even an app you could download in advance that would ring for you.
Around 7:30 we met up with Delph and headed to Centre Pompidou, where we saw a strange German artist wearing a skirt and blush drawing on a large piece of paper while mixing things strangers were saying into a microphone. Very abstract, to say the least.
We then went on the search for falafel on our way to Place de la République for a Fog Installation. The wait for falafel was about 25 minutes, so we decided to go on our way and just eat something that we found. We ended up stopping at a little street café/restaurant, where we all got croque-monsieur and I ordered my first beer while here (1664). Both the food and beer were delicious.

We made it to the Fog installation, which was exceptionally less cool in person considering the mobs of people present, took some pictures, and left to come home (by this point we had been walking around for easily 5 or 6 hours). I'm glad I was here for it, and I'm glad we had Delph with us to guide us to the better places, but I do think Nuit Blanche may be more exciting as a native-french speaker with a group of friends. Regardless, we still had a great time.