My trip to work was somewhat more eventful than usual this morning: as the queue to switch to the A train was too long for my taste, I exited the Chatelet station to grab a Vélib rental bike near Le Louvre and followed the Louvre palace for a few hundred meters, until reaching a police barricade that left the remainder of the Rivoli street empty, a surreal sight on a weekday! As it happened, Beji Caid Essebsi, the president of Tunisia was on a state visit to Paris and staying at the 5-star Hotel Meurice. And just about to leave the hotel. So I hanged out there for a few minutes and watched a caravan of official dark cars leave the place, preceded by police bikes in formal dress! The ride to Dauphine was not yet straightforward as the Champs-Elysées had been closed as well, since the president was attending a commemoration (for Tunisian soldiers who died in French wars?) at Arc de Triomphe. This created a mess for traffic in the surrounding streets. Especially with pedestrians escaping from stuck buses and crowding my sidewalks! And yet another surreal sight of the Place de l’Étoile with no car. (In this end, this initiative of mine took an extra 1/2 hour on my average transit time…)
