Paris Hillsong, The Montparnasse Tower, and Jazz in the Luxembourg Gardens

Bonsoir Family and Friends!
We started our day at La Favorite for our usual order in the morning. Despite the sad name for a cafe in Paris, it has a warm atmosphere, and it's nice to have that as well as the flakey croissants. When we finished our coffee, we walked towards the metro to start our journey to Montparnasse. Although Montparnasse isn't that far from the Marais, it's having to change trains 3 times that makes it feel like a bit of a journey.
We reached Montparnasse, which is in Arrondissement 14 and is on the left bank of the river Seine. We found the Theatre Bobino at 20 rue de la Gaite. The Bobino is a music hall theatre that's been around since 1800.
The reason we came to the Bobino Theatre was because it hosts the Paris Hillsongs Church for Sunday services. We had attended a Hillsong service in London in an old theatre called Dominion, a few years ago and enjoyed it. When we heard there was a Hillsongs church in Paris, we planned to go. We attended and enjoyed the service, in which the theme was, "Being Wide Awake In Life". The church was comprised primarily of young people, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway. We met a young girl, born and raised in Mexico city, who had recently moved to Paris to be with her new husband, who was born and raised in Paris. Strangely she met her husband in Mexico city when he was there on business. She said she loves Paris, and that the city feels "like a neighbourhood" in Mexico city which has a population of 22 million, and Paris has only 2.3 million people.
As I sat in the service, looking at the stage of the Bobino theatre, I must say I couldnt help but think of a few of the famous people who had performed on that very stage in the 1920's and 1930's - people like Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco, and Josephine Baker. In fact, Josephine Baker gave her last performance on that stage in 1968.
When the service was over, we walked over to the Montparnasse Tower, which opened in 1972. It is a tall, (210 meters) black, rather non-descript office tower and stands alone in Montparnasse. We took an elevator to the top and had an unobstructed, panoramic view of the city of Paris. It was very chilly and windy up there. We could see all the famous landmarks of Paris, which appeared very tiny. Of course there was a souvenir shop on the premises!
We left the tower, and walked across Place Josephine Baker. Josephine Baker was a black woman born in Missouri, U.S. in 1906. She has such an amazing life story, if anyone would like to know about her. When she came to Paris, she started performing with little clothing, in uninhibited ways, and of course was an immediate a sensation here. People referred to her as the "Black Venus".
We came onto Montparnasse Boulevard, and walked along looking at some of the old, Bohemian cafes of Paris. We came to one called Cafe De Le Rotonde. We stopped in and had a lovely time having lunch in this elegant, old cafe. It was warm and inviting with a red carpeted floor, red ceilings, red chairs with black, ornate backs on them, and orange lanterns hanging from the ceiling. We tried the French Onion soup, a nice vegetable salad with bread, and of course rose wine. As I sat in my chair, and looked around, I wondered where Modigliani had sat, when he introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew",to an American woman,(also a painter)in the cafe.
Cafe De Le Rotonde has amazing history. Along with Le Coupole, Le Dome, and Le Select, also on Montparnasse Boulevard, it was a meeting place for artists, sculptors, writers, and poets of Paris in the 1920s and 30s. These artists,(Picasso, Degas, Matisse, Chagall, Diego Riviera, Modigliani to name only some, were so poor they couldn't pay their food bill half the time. Because of this, they would leave a painting with the owner of the cafe, in good faith, that just as soon as they had some cash, they'd be back to pay their tab, and collect their art. Many times however, this never happened so the art was kept and eventually fell into the hands of private collectors. If you had walked into the Cafe Rotonde back in those years, you would have seen paintings tacked up here and there, some of which now hang in various galleries of the world, and are worth millions of euro.
When we left this glorious, old cafe, we walked to the nearby Luxembourg Gardens and saw that there was a stage set up for a one hour jazz concert which would feature the music of Chopin. So we grabbed a few chairs and waited a half hour in the chilly wind and intermittent sprinkles for the concert to begin. We sat through the concert in the wind, huddled together with our umbrella popped open over our heads, and lots of other people did the same thing. It was fun, and when you look around and remember that you are in the Luxembourg Gardens, you savour the moment, because after all, you are in Paris. I think back to the words I heard in the church service today,"Je Vis," which means,"I Live!"
On the way back to the apartment, we stopped to purchase a baguette, some fruit, and a slice of flan which looked yellowish and creamy for our supper. We ate our small dinner, and then went back out for an evening stroll.
We were talking about the Paris and its history and found it amusing that it is called the City of Lights, not only because of the beautiful lights at night on the bridges, the streets, the Eiffel Tower, and the Champs Élysées - but also because the word "Lights" refers to the writers, artists, and academics that have always been drawn to the City...