While I napped, my daughter was caught in the grève. She needed to get through it to get back to the hotel, and found that crossing the street (full of demonstrators) took about 40 minutes.
She reports that for two minutes it was sort of cool, being in the middle of the grève, but after that, it was annoying and a little scary. Nothing scary was happening (or did happen, thank goodness), but you could see how it could get scary in a hurry, with so many people jammed so close together. According to tv reports, the organizers said there were 270,000 people demonstrating in Paris, and, according to the police, there were 90,000.
That evening we were to dine with the family who hosted my daughter when she was in Paris in 2008. I wondered how we would get there, as the demonstration was to end at our Metro stop around the time we needed to go.
It turned out to be a non-issue. Many people had straggled out, along the way, so the number which actually reached la Place de la Nation was far smaller than the number near la Place de la Bastille had been.
When we were ready to go downtown, there were a number of people at la Place de la Nation, and you can see there was smoke on the other side, but we got on the Metro at our usual place, and had no trouble getting where we needed to go.
Apparently a grève can be announced, expected, and limited in time. This one was over, the same day it began. (Luckily for us! We had places to go, and things to see...... Dinner to eat.....)
See my daughter's post about getting caught in la grève (and the rest of the 7th) here.
Now we are in the neighborhood where my daughter lived in 2008.
This park is in a boulevard's wide center. There are gardens.
There is a ping-pong table.
There is a pétanque court.
The man in blue has just thrown a ball.
The goal is to get close to the little green ball.
The apartment where my daughter lived in 2008 is just above R.Pons, and is reached through the blue opening at right. Her window was second from the left.
I very much enjoyed meeting her host family. They were very welcoming and friendly. It was very generous of them to invite me to dinner as well as my daughter. As was usual for the trip, I was able to understand most of what was said. At least ... I thought so. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.) They have hosted dozens of American students, and are used to the peculiarities of knowledge of native English speakers. I'm sure they changed their way of speaking to accommodate my deficiencies, which made it much easier for me to understand.
They are hosting two girls from the USA this term. They were there for dinner, too. One of them was the only person I spoke to in France who had less French than I.
We talked about many things, including the strike.
We were served a very lovely dinner, which included vegetables cooked as they would be for moussaka, a green salad, and a tarte with mirabelles. Yum.
It was a very pleasant evening.
Eventually we said our good-byes. We had no trouble at all catching the Metro back up to la Nation, and we got back to the hotel entirely without incident.
In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.
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