Although Jack and I are not jazz fanatics, but, our eldest has broad and mature taste in jazz music. I'm not sure where she got it from since we almost never play anything outside of Michael Buble covers of jazz standards! With this in mind, we thought it a unique opportunity to celebrate and deepen her interest by taking all the kids to the Jazz School for Kids hosted by the festival organizers. I thoroughly enjoyed the show but I think it was a little young for Charlotte and Jacqui and required a little mental effort to follow along as 75% of it was in French. I was surprised and a little disappointed that neither of the older girls seemed interested to try to follow along. This is an ill-formed theory so bear with me but I worry that it's the dopamine fatigue that their brains get when they spend a lot of time on screens. The cartoons today demand nothing, not even to follow a simple plot-line for more than a few minutes and the hand-held device games offer an instant dopamine squirt for even the simplest interaction. This outing asked them to concentrate, listen carefully for the english and follow the non-verbal cues of the performers. It was packaged together in a colorful, kid-friendly package but they were not down! We might need to re-introduce the draconian screen-time rules we had last school year. They were universally hated but it kept things a little bit in check! Listen for it ... when I tell Jacqui this, you will be able to hear her screams of anguish from your living room.
After that we checked out the kid's section of the festival - it was all very nicely set up with a circus school, play structures cooling sprayers and face painting. Fun!
Jack, Jacqui and Natalie peeled off for the cool, air conditioned comfort of our condo and Charlotte, who is always game to do one more thing, and I went to the Museum of Contempoary Art and then shopped our way through Chinatown on the way home. I wouldn't let her buy anything because ... well, Chinatown tchotckes are universal the world over and we can get all this from San Francisco's CT. She was happy just to look.
After depositing the littles with Courtney, we stopped at Cafe Tommy for an aperitivo and to get a little work done. The internet at Cafe Tommy is almost as slow as that in our condo but the view is better and there's booze! Then off to our dinner rez at Le Bremner. Our meal was lovely and the people watching was extraordinaire! No one would argue that Montreal is a stand in for Paris but it could certainly be Leon or Marseille.
Mango flower
Cafe Tommy
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