We were very lucky with the weather. The day started out wet, cleared up during the drive to Giverny, and started to rain on the trip back.
mrsamaroo captured this moment from the backseat - not a bad artsy photo.
It's Saturday, so that means the Police Nationale and the Gendarmerie were out in force to play with the Yellow Vests. This has been a weekly ritual for the past 27 or so weeks. The drive back was a little congested due to the many road blocks set up by the very heavily geared coppers. It looked like something from a Hollywood movie, the Gendarmerie looked like they were ready for battle. The hardware they had on the street was impressive.
We had to past a few of these roadblocks, this is the last one that leads onto Place de la Concorde and our hotel. A little hard to make out from the photo, but the trucks have these automatically deployed barriers - they line up, push a button and the barrier is deployed blocking the street. This photo shows two trucks doing the job.... we only saw these on the streets of Paris for VE day and Saturday afternoon. Amazing bit of kit!
Also saw a few of these water cannon trucks, but the yellow vest weren't that interested - maybe the weather or a decent game of soccer was on the telly and sucked their enthusiasm dry. This afternoon we walked throughout the 1st, 7th and 8th ARR, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary - the police and all road blocks were off the streets by around 6pm. The streets and cafes were full of people going about their normal routine...
The view walking down Rue Saint-Dominique
Some more real estate windows.... 8m2 for only 149,000 euros. Must be tough being a first home buyer in this city!
First time I've seen an agent try to flog a property using volume, but at 8 m2 ..... a whopping 20.93 m3 sounds better
The weather cleared up allowing a nice Saturday afternoon rouge or two
These guys were having a fun time- assuming it was a bucks day out.