It's Not ALWAYS Perfect in Paris

Early this afternoon I took a wonderful walk through the tiny streets of the Marais with hundreds of other people. The sun was peeking through the clouds, the cafes were crowded. There were street artists and muscians, and everybody was happy.

On my way home I stopped at a little café on the edge of Place de la Bastille for a coffee on the terrace. While I was sitting there about fifty demonstrators marched by with flags, screaming about something.  They headed over to the Opera, where all good demonstrations take place. Somehow in the block between the café I was sitting in and the Opera, things became violent.  They were throwing things and had removed the flags from the sticks they were on and were swinging those.  The police (how do they always know?) started spraying tear gas, and the demonstrators started running back past the café.

 By this time they were dumping trash cans and throwing construction barricades from the sidewalk into the street.


The waitors hustled everybody inside and closed the doors, and we all stood at the windows and watched. (This is now one of my favorite cafés) The riot police were chasing right behind the demonstrators in tight formation.

The guy standing in the photos is the bartender, and he had just run out to the curb to move his motorcycle closer to the building.  Smart!

The police started running down the street and it appears that they cut the demonstrators off about a block away.

Five minutes later, other than a traffic jam, the streets seemed to be back to normal.  I was ready to depart the cafe, but a gentleman that I had been talking to suggested I may want to wait another five or ten minutes as there were still police combing the area. So I took his advice just to be safe. And I never found out what the protest was about.

When I got back to my apartment, from which I have a perfect view, I could see that trash cans had been dumped, and the glass windshield behind the bus stop had been shattered.

Another group of demonstrators, waving Turkish flags, had arrived and were chanting and cheering, but never became violent. 

Although they didn't have much of an opportunity because the sidewalk in front of them was lined with riot police carrying shields and rifles.  They have since dispersed and the street cleaners are here, cleaning the streets before the opera crowd shows up. All is back to normal.

And here are some snaps of my meandering prior to the excitement.............

                                                             Playing jazz and the blues

                                                      Classical at the Place des Vosges

                                                     Painting in the arcade...............

                                                             Collecting fall leaves

                                      The line for this falafel restaurant was over a block long.

                                                             Hiding from Mama.........