Nuit Blanche or Nuit Blah?

Late-night exhibits, hidden corners of the ‘City of lights’ exposed, amorous rendez-vous and drinking…lots of drinking is the definition of the once-a-year event that the charming little village of Paris calls Nuit blanche or “White Night”. The Nuit Blanche allows for the arty-party people to observe alternative art exhibitions all night long with an extended metro curfew and two-for-one drink specials all around town

So the question is…Nuit Blanche? Or encore a Nuit Blah? When I first lived in Paris (in 2006) I encountered my first Nuit Blanche when on my way home from dinner with a friend I noticed (around 10pm) that there were an enormous amount of people out on the street, the metros were packed strike-style and tourist areas were teeming with wine-sodden Frenchies oohing and aahing over something rather a-typical. Obviously I had no clue what was going on and went to bed early. Hence…a true and triumphant Nuit á la clueless American.

Fast-forward 4 ½ years, 6 lovely trips back to Paris, and my now residency of 6 months and I was ready to enjoy Nuit Blanche with all the superior knowledge of a faux-française. I was expecting-a fun night of bar-hopping, seeing friends in varying states of inebriation and walking around Paris in the cold crisp autumn air at 4am with mon chérie.

Thanks to the germ-incubators I get to watch every day, I was plagued with a cold and a gastro-intestinal virus, which was not aided when I decided to eat a steak tartare. To skip the gory details, lets just say that diarrhea medication and cocktails do not go together. Bar hopping and sipping an herbal tea valiantly while my friends were drinking mojitos was just the start of this years Nuit Blanche. After finishing my delicious and stomach-settling tea we jaunted off to a birthday party where the Spice Girls was pumpin’, the champagne flowin’ and the headache was commencin’.

After the second round of “If you wanna be my lovah” I left my boyfriend to fend for himself and I escaped from the hazy cigarette smoke filled apartment into the crisp autumn air. At 1am I was at home thoroughly enjoying a box of Kleenex and a few chapters of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

It wasn’t a total bust. I did manage to see an exhibit on line 9 at the deserted station of Saint-Martin. It was alive with theatrical lighting and art students duped into wearing black and doing performance art into the wee small hours. It lasted approximately 35 seconds.

So this year, I’m going to chalk one up to experience. A few words of advice to escape a nuit barf…do not eat a steak tartare unless it’s fresh. To state it baldly, this Nuit Blanche was a grade-A-certifiable-insert-Copland’s-‘Hoe-down’-here Nuit Blah.