Since May 1st is a work holiday in France, and most of the museums are closed, I traveled north to the Sacre Cœur. I took along some homework....which of course stayed in my bag the whole time. I walked up the steps seen in the film Amelie, and sat in the grass on the hill below the magnificent Sacre Cœur. There were the usual groups of performers wrangling a few coins out of the tourists: lonely men with guitars, street kids doing hip hop, a "football freelancer" doing tricks with a soccer ball, and then, on the largest of the pavilions between sets of steps, an actual organized performance began.
I should have guessed something was about due to the fish-shaped kites blowing about, but I hadn't read anything about a festival happening today, so I was still surprised. Three muscular men in grass costumes and scary masks began dancing about, drumming and chanting. After they ran off and ditched the masks, they came back and did some amazing drum work, eventually joined by a wood flute and a citar (I think). After nudging aside some children so I could have a seat on the steps, I enjoyed the rest of the performance.
The rest of the evening was just as interesting, since Chris, another AU student in my program, had also returned to Paris. We went to one of Paris' thousands (maybe hundreds, I haven't counted) of small theatres and saw the 1967 Roman Polanski vampire film The Fearless Vampire Killers. Which, it turns out, is slightly comical AND Polanski himself plays the part of the bumbling professor's loyal assistant. Turns out he looked much, much younger then.
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