Events of a tourist in Paris, a Saturday – 04/12/2019

Paris It never disappoints. Unless you land for the first time to spend a single day here, with little chance that this one day is a Saturday.

Because for 22 weeks, Parisian Saturdaysthe wicked days for the voracious visitor of the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame.

These are days of sirens, confusion, subways that do not stop in all seasons fences which prevent from approaching the monuments of postcards and armed policemen as the final battle of Fortnite.

This has been happening since mid-November 2018, when an increase in the fuel tax decreed by the government of Emmanuel Macron turned the annoyance of people into fury, then into a movement organized through social networks: thousands without visible leader, men and women put the yellow safety vest that every driver must wear in the trunk of the car to be able to use it in case of emergency and They cut the roads.

I kept reading

Events in France

New York Times International Weekly

On the first day of protest, on November 17, some 280,000 people protested against the increase because Macron had not started. To calm things down, the French president also announced an increase in the minimum wage that The dissatisfaction did not leave and transformed the protest of yellow vests into a litany that Saturday after Saturday, Claims for the resignation of Macron.

Clarin Bulletins

What happened today? We tell you the most important news of the day and what will happen tomorrow when you get up

Monday to Friday afternoon.

For all this, arriving in Paris on a Saturday is walking in a refined city, crossed by electric skateboards and protected by cars police and gendarmerie disturbing.

After lunch

The tension begins to be felt after lunch while brewery round tables where the public always looks towards the street the spectacle of watching life go by. The guests are having coffee. It's the time in which the yellow vests they start their walk from different points of the city.

At this time, the Place de la Concorde, elegant and spacious eighteenth century square built in the honor of Louis XV, it's a wasteland. In the distance, the Eiffel Tower also releases an unusual desolation for a spring Saturday.

A police suit blocks access to the Concorde from the rue de Rivoli which, on the edge of the Tuileries garden, becomes pedestrian. In an effort in Spanish, the service officer crushes the selfie with the Obelisk Concorde that a family from Central America plans to manufacture:You can not pbad. I am sorry. I speak Spanish because my girlfriend is Colombian ", justifies her gift of languages ​​by the young officer.

A couple, hand in hand, crosses kisses a sacred Champs Elyseesto the Arc de Triomphe by police cars lined up on the line between the outside and the back. She, a little embarrbaded by the militarization of the avenue that had its moment of glory in the Belle Epoque, goes on the phone broken windows it still remains from the mid-March demonstration, the most violent until here in the center of Paris. With his mobile phone also high, he photographed the facade of some shops and restaurants such as Fouquet & # 39; s perfumes or Al Jazeera, boarded with metal bars and closed. like they'd never think of opening their doors. Although it is just for today.

The first metro line in Paris was distributed here, which closes this Saturday almost all the stations: Tuileries, Concorde and Champs-Élysées Clémenceau, among others.

Saturday demonstrations have an impact and how, in tourism, in December reserves fell between 30 and 35 percent.

"We recommend to visitors, if they can, do not go around on saturday"This is the employee of one of the tourist buses that we cross through Paris.

"At different times, there are closed sections, and although the gendarmes say that in ten minutes they release the traffic, our buses are stopped up to 40 minutes with people on board, who lose patience. "

Three options

The Saturday tourist in Paris has three options: just take an incomplete postcard from the city, lose patience or die of fear. Otherwise, let the visitors tell that on Saturday, January 5, they were at the Orsay Museum or were drinking something at the Flore, boulevard Saint-Germain, when the anger of the yellow jackets burned cars while police responded with tear gas and fire mouths.

"The times are a little convulsed here, I'm going to ask you, please, that Do not leave the hotel without your pbadports. There may be police checks, "says a French guide to a group of Californian tourists.

There is show bags and backpacks to enter the Galeries Lafayette, and the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and the Opera were, in December, a few Saturdays Closed. Until the French Football Championship is suspended and postponed five of its dates.

On the Champs Elysees, a gallery has a giant screen with the news following the protest of the yellow vests. The television says that this Saturday, there are three thousand and that they will arrive at La Defensa. They carry a banner that prays "Yellow vests are not terrorists but exhausted citizens". And this, in their wake, they invite tourists to join the march.

Paris, special envoy