Au revoir Paris

Day three started out really sunny and with lots of promise as we took a metro trip to La Defense which is the downtown Paris working area. Lots of futuristic highrise buildings like any other downtown location and I can see it being really packed and bustling on a work day. A train ride back to the city center and a walk around Les Halles which has a really huge shopping mall but with boring chain stores we can find over in the States.  At night Les Halles has a strip of clubs and bars and a bit of seediness thrown in for those with much energy to spare after walking around the city all day.  A walk through the grounds of the Louvre museum and Jardin des Tuileries which is supposed to be a really great centrally located garden but there was barely any green so calling it a garden was a bit of a stretch. The tour ended at Place de la Concorde and the obelisk which is a huge gold topped obelisk taken from the Egyptians by Napoleon during his reign.

At night we took a dinner boat ride with the Bateaux-Mouches company along the Seine.  This was by no means cheap as it involved a 4 course dinner, a bottle of champagne and wine and I am sure there are cheaper dinner tours available if we had done the research but it was a nice dinner and the views of all the major monuments along the Seine…whew, you just can’t take too many pictures of the Eiffel tower especially when it is all lit up at night. Absolutely beautiful.  The buildings along the Seine are historic but fabulous architecture and it is sometimes hard to believe they have stood for thousands of years.

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Nairobi, Kenya Part 3

After two days of singing, we finally got some time to relax, to shop and to fellowship with one another and with the locals.
 
The day before I was to leave, we were invited to a local “Bomas” for a congratulatory and thank-you dinner for our concert. We were served native Kenya dishes that included goat meat and lots of vegetables.
 
The actual site was on the outskirts of the city, and IT WAS VERY DARK outside. When our buses arrived, the quiet blew through the night and trees. But in a faint distance, we could hear singing and uleling from members of the Masai tribe, who hosted the event. They greeted us with ceremonial wraps (which became souvenirs) and presented a fashion and talent show, highlighting the hope of tourism outlined by the capital’s government.
 
After dinner, native sons and daughters met with the choir members and shared with us how they could identify us with the country’s native tribes by looking at our facial features and structures. By the end of the evening, our hosts gave us handmade animals for us to take home as reminders of their appreciation and our time with them.
 
Kenya is beautiful. Its people are beautiful, and traveling there is a once-in-a-lifetime trek that anyone can take and draw so much from.