Tuesday in Paris -- strike.....

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This morning we tried to get downtown early enough to get in to see the Sainte Chapelle -- a very old chapel that is nearly all stained glass.

We got downtown, we got our coffee, and then we discovered it the Chapelle was closed "due to a strike."

Ok......

So we went to the Louvre to see if we could go down under the glass pyramid, and discovered they were having some sort of ceremony, with guards and firefighters another group of uniformed people, some of whom were playing band instruments. We enjoyed the music, and tried (not very hard) to find out what was going on, but failed. A mystery.

Unfortunately the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, so we went back into the neighborhood where the foodie worked when she lived here two years ago, and had some very nice falafel for lunch. I love falafel. In Ann Arbor, it is often served with a choice of tabouleh, or hummus, or baba gannouj. This was served with what seemed a lot like cole slaw, with cucumber and tomato (and even some sauteed eggplant) in addition to red and green cabbage in a white sauce (yogurt?). It was very good.

Then she wanted to go take another look at a remaindered book store we'd seen before, and I wanted to go back to the hotel for a rest since we have evening plans.

She told me where to get on the subway. That station was closed (gates down), so I looked at my trusty street/subway map, and found another station, and rode back to the hotel, and enjoyed a series of naplets.

She got home over two hours later, having gotten trapped in the 10s (100s?) of thousands of people who are protesting the French government's intent to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 (along with other plans to attempt to reduce spending).

It took her the better part of an hour to escape the press of people and get back to the hotel.....

I am glad I was lucky and inadvertently evaded it..........

Supposedly they are marching on our nearby metro stop (the one we need to get where we're going tonight), so I guess we're leaving early and hoping for the best.....

I guess all of this was planned and known in advance by people who are reading the newspapers, and everything I read on the BBC said it was "for today"..........

Let's hope so, and today will be all, and then things will be back to normal.

So the word from here is -- we're fine, though one of us was inconvenienced noticeably this afternoon.................



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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