Colorful Weekend 8-29 & 8-30-15

Yesterday, Saturday, It was hot so we had a fairly quiet day although we did go down to brocante in the neighborhood.  We managed to stay in the shade for a large part of the market so it was not too bad wandering through and looking at things.   So nothing too much to report.  Although speaking of color, on Friday during our trip to Ecouen I spotted what I thought was a parrot flying along the train line.   It was a Rose-ringed Parakeet, they are bright green with a red-ring around their necks but then I thought, "Naw just looked green".   Yesterday morning I was on the terrace in the early morning and darned if a pair of bright green birds didn't fly right along the street out of the park.  These are the same type of birds we saw when we were in Madrid, fascinating at least to me.

Today however is a complete change, there was an Indian festival over on the streets to the north of Gare du Nord near an area known as the Goutte D'Or in the 18th arr.  So we took the bus over to within a few blocks of where it was to take place, then walked to the parade route and found a place where we would have a shady place to watch.  It was the Ganesh festival and Deb had been keeping it in mind since before we left Denver so what fun to be able to go over and see it.

We got there probably 45 minutes before they actually started the procession so we wandered down to where they would start.

It was very crowded and quite loud with Indian music and a man on a loudspeaker talking even louder so I didn't spend too much time but just looked at all the women in their beautiful and rainbow colored saris.
Deb had waited back a little further so I went back to her and we then found a place where we could watch that had shade and not too many people.
It worked out perfectly and we were able to watch as the marchers and floats came through.
The procession itself passed by for perhaps 45 minutes but there were hordes of walkers between the floats so it was a continuous stream of color and incense.

After the last groups filed past we followed up to the corner where we could get back to our bus and headed back to the apartment for a late lunch.