Paris loves jazz. We love Paris. We love jazz. But we haven’t had a chance to put them together until this visit. We kicked off our not-holiday weekend with a trip to 38Riv, a teeny, tiny jazz club (about 40 people were able to squish in (tiny is being quite generous, the room was about 20′ by 15′, and underground), to see a chanteuse, Ô de mon Chéri. She sang a mix of English and French tunes from the 1920s-’50s.

Not only was she a great singer, but she seemed to be having fun, which translated into an energetic and engaging show for us. Much of the repartee among band members was in French, but she also speaks English, so we did get some of it.

Before the show, the club owner came out and spoke, mostly in French, but with a bit of English mixed in. What Steven and I got out of it is that he seemed to be quite drunk, or at least altered in some way. Or maybe he’s just a weird dude.

Before the show, we had dinner at Tamarind, a Thai restaurant nearby. The woman asked us if we like spicy food, to which we responded with a resounding YES. While flavorful, you will not be surprised to know that the French version of spicy and our version of spicy are very different.

Saturday we mostly chilled, which for us means that by about 4 p.m. we were bored and decided to head out for a drink. We wanted to get a decent walk in, so we went to a bar called Rhinoceros in a neighborhood we hadn’t been in before. Turns out, we walked right past an excellent view of the Tour Eiffel. There were even a few freezing brides doing photo sessions on the bridge over the Seine. We had a drink, chatted with the waitstaff in French, English and Spanish and then headed back for some nighttime football. The first photo below, shows a large nosed animal – and a picture of a rhinoceros.

Sunday was musical day. We saw “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at the Lido2 theater. (Luckily it was in English.) The farce, with music by Steven Sondheim and book by book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, originally played on Broadway from 1962-64. The theater was maybe half full (maybe because it was Christmas Eve, which seems to be the day a lot of the world celebrates Christmas), but the show was funny, campy and light. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Too bad we won’t be back in March (for many reasons — it’s PARIS!) because they will be performing Rocky Horror. Now that would be funny. It was a late afternoon show and when we got out, all the lights on the Champs-Élysées were twinkling.

Monday, commonly known as Christmas or the day the Jews go to the movies and eat Chinese food, we … went to the movies and ate Chinese food. We saw “Winter Break,” which I guess is called “The Holdovers” in the U.S., with Paul Giamatti. It was a sweet, melancholic film. The popcorn, called popcorn (swallow a few letters, maybe say pocorrr and then it is French), wasn’t as fabulous as U.S. movie popcorn, but it was good enough.

From the movie, we walked about 1 1/2 hours over to the Jardin des Plantes for what I keep calling zoo lights, but was really Jungle en voie d’illumination or Illuminated Jungle (unless you listen to Google translate and then it is “Jungle in the process of being enlightened (I have always thought Google was very zen) I guess you can take your pick). The garden was transformed into a jungle with animals, plants and trees made of cloth and wire and internally lit. It really was beautiful. And despite the fact that there seemed to be a long line (tickets were time-entry but we didn’t realize 6 p.m. was the first entry), once inside, we were not crowded at all.

There was a proscribed path that took us a bit over an hour to walk after which, hungry and a bit chilled (at least it didn’t rain although it got a bit misty a couple of times), we walked over to Mian Fon for Chinese food (OK, they bill themselves as Asian fusion, but who’s counting?).

We noticed that there are many more restaurants and food establishments open on Christmas than we expected. Good to know for next time?