Paris Weekly: Vendome, Rufus, AaRON and Monopoly

I had a treat this week when I convinced the manager of the famous Ritz Hotel in Place Vendome to let me go to the rooftop of the hotel to take a few photos. I was really

surprised they let me but I’m glad they did. You don’t have to go very high in Paris for a spectacular view.

Shot two concerts – Rufus Wainwright (son of Loudon) and AaRON – both very well known here but not so much in the US (although I hear Rufus is finding a bit of a following there).

AaRON is a collaboration between two very talented men, one a Franco-American singer and the other a composer and arranger. They sing some songs in English, some in French. Their first album has gone double gold here but I doubt many in the US have heard of them. If you’re interested, have a listen to this song called “Lili” (⇐ click here to listen) and see why I think they’ve got a bright future.

The insane transportation strike has taken what most people think is just a pause. It’s been pretty horrible the last 2 weeks if you had to get on a metro, bus or train. For those of you that are confused as to why you can still take a train, bus or metro during a strike, the answer is because the strikers usually leave extremely limited service on certain lines. What this ends up translating to is that everyone on these limited service lines ends up wanting to kill each other because they are so packed together. A couple of days ago I was crushed like a sardine on a line 4 metro car and just before the doors closed, an idiot basically took a running start and smashed into us and wedged himself into the already extremely packed car. I learned some new French words from the others in our train and when the idiot turned around to me and tried to excuse himself by saying “c’est normal” (it’s normal), I responded with “sur quelle planete?” (on what planet?).

And finally, had dinner with my friend the Conquistadore and after we were done eating, a couple approached us and asked if we wanted to join them in a game of … Monopoly. It’s not everyday that I’m asked to play Monopoly so we agreed and spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and building houses on the Ave des Champs-Elysees.

Some photos of the week …