PARIS (Jardin de Luxemburg)

My reason for going to Paris (if anyone actually needs a reason besides ‘because it’s there’) was to go to the Rock en Seine music festival, down at Parc de St Cloud at the end of metro line 10.

For a festival with so many headline acts it wasn’t particularly well publicised; nobody I mentioned it to outside of France had heard of it.  Maybe the French just wanted to keep it all to themselves.

Parc de St Cloud

I’d never been to a French music event before.  The whole thing was very chic.  Even if you’re standing around in the rain in a muddy field, that is no excuse for slobby dressing.  This meant that I didn’t pass for a local.  Even before I opened my mouth and subjected anyone to my bad French accent, they started speaking to me in English.  I wasn’t fooling anyone.

The festival food here was better than normal, as would be expected of France I suppose.  My complaint always, when I go somewhere like this, is that there aren’t enough healthier food options.  It’s not that I’m puritanical about what I eat – far from it – but I like to be able to make the choice. The foo was good.

That is Blondie up on the stage there, although you may just have to take my word for it. Would I lie to you? Got pretty crowded in there.

As for the music, on Friday I saw Blondie, The Hives and Arctic Monkeys.  Over the course of the weekend there is The Prodigy, Queens of the Stone Age and La Roux, all of whom I saw a couple of weeks ago at Sziget.

Buying some vinyl