The Night Market

    Friday night was a little windy and a little rainy but not extravagantly so and because that was true we went out for dinner instead of cooking at home. Elena had heard of a movie theater on Kent Terrace that she'd been told has a restaurant inside; a cool place decorated in a Roaring Twenties theme. That sounded intriguing enough that the four of us started walking there at around 7 p.m.
    We arrived only to be mildly disappointed. It turned out that the "restaurant" was really a cafe of sorts. Although it was done in a striking black-and-white, art deco motif, all you could get there were drinks and bar food.
    Walking there, however, was not a complete waste of time - my legs did not agree but you know how they are, if they had their way I'd never leave the couch - because we did get a chance to explore the neighborhood around the theater. It has a lot of actual restaurants as well as a couple more movie theaters and some interesting shops. We finally wound up eating chicken at a Nando's franchise, mostly because Josep - at 13 - has an aversion to trying anything exotic such as Vietnamese or Thai food.
    It was while out on our Friday night ramble that we discovered The Night Market on the Left Bank just off the Cuba Street pedestrian mall. You enter down this narrow alleyway into a square that has restaurants, a really nice bookstore, shops and a lot of small temporary stands selling food, jewelry and assorted sundries. It was great, not only for the sights, sounds and smells but also because the people there were just odd enough to be fun. Among them: a few punks, a few Goths, a few dreamily hip couples who might well have teleported in from a long-ago Grateful Dead concert and some guys who looked like they'd really like to start a revolution but not until they had just a couple more cups of coffee and maybe another slice of pie.
    I could have stayed all night, especially since there was a young woman there singing who had a really marvelous voice. When we arrived she was singing something from "Phantom of the Opera" but by the time I got my camera out she'd finished. I did manage to get some video of her singing a few minutes later... not great video, but better than what I shot of the old busker a few days ago.
    (Maybe if I keep shooting video I'll eventually get good at it... sigh, that's just wishful thinking I'm afraid... Anyway, here it is...)