We were walking home from the tiny sushi restaurant, replete with our best-ever, for Paris standards anyway, omakase dinner. We gave the chef free reign and were rewarded with the likes of marinated eel liver, plump oysters, crunchy-sweet chewy fins of yet another fish that we knew not its English name and finally, a series of sushi items that ranged from spot-on classical otoro to innovative yuzu salt flecked whimsies before screeching to a halt with a rather scary battera of unknown fish with gelatinous skin. Well there was also a roll of chopped maguro but by that time my stomach had run out of space.
Eiffel Tower twinkled benignly as we passed the Trocadero, I recounted to husband the events that happened while he was away in Brest earlier in the week. Suddenly, the normally quiet streets erupted in a cacophony of loud cheers and honkings from cars. A fleet of dark blue gendarmerie vans careened through the traffic with their insistent sirens. "On a gagné! people shouted from the balcony.
Husband and I frowned. Could it be? Non, ce nést pas possible! Oh, but stranger things have happened. And indeed the unexpected had come to pass. The French rugby team, the very one that lost its first round match on the first night of this World Cup, clawed their way back to enter the quarter finals; tonight, they defeated team titan, the New Zealand's All-Blacks. Pretty incredible really.
It is La Nuit Blanche tonight, when many places stay open and music play till morning comes and there's no need to sleep. Well, with this major win, Paris is definitely partying all night long and painting the town blue with its team colours!
