Cruise on the Seine and Surprise Sitar Concert

We enjoyed a lovely dinner cruise on the Seine aboard Le Calife. The ship was crafted by the owner and captain, Nicolas from a basic barge base. What we didn't know ahead of time was that on board, there is a sound studio with a Steinway piano.

During the cruise, we met a gentleman named Imran Khan from Bombay who invited us to stay for a private sitar concert on the ship following the cruise. We chatted a bit as well with the ship's manager, Susan Levitt, a South African expat whose brother is coincidentally a newly appointed senior executive at CIBC. She also encouraged us to stay and brought us armagnac on the house.

The concert turned out to be a riveting and mesmerizing jam session with Imran Khan on the sitar (we think he may be related by some degrees to Ravi Shankar), Sabir Khan on the saranghi, the captain, Nicolas on piano, a British guitarist named Mike and an unknown but very talented saxophone player.

It was a real highlight and we are very glad we stayed. It's now 2:30 and we just got back to our apartment. We've agreed to skip the catacombs tomorrow morning and sleep in. ;-)