Yet another Protest

When you need a household item in Paris you head to the BHV department store on Rue du Rivoli across from Paris's city hall. BHV is an eclectic store that sells just about everything. Think about it as a combination Macy's ... Canadian Tire store. Rue de Rivoli is one of the main tourist streets with a number of very big hotels and runs along the Jardin des Tuileries, the Louve and the Palais Royal so it is a magnet for tourists. It starts at the Bastille and ends at Place du Concorde where it morphs into Avenue Des Champs Elysees the most famous street in Paris and possibly the world.

I picked up a few items at the BHV and on exiting was caught in a crowd stopped on the street by this protest all of which were riding motor bikes and all were making a LOT of noise. I'm not exactly sure who they were but I think it was the rail workers again. The signs on these bikes read "Ligue De Defense Des Conducteurs" and under this it read "Repression routiere: trop c'est trop". I'm guessing at what it means but I suspect they are NOT very happy campers.

I thought it was just a short wave of bikers doing their noisy thing since they were stopped at the light up the street and the road was clear. The sidewalk was jammed so I jay walked across the street to get some room and some pictures from a better vantage point since I saw there was another wave of bikers revving their engines heading my way. To my surprise this lasted for close to a half hour. I don't know how many bikes were involved but it had to be in the thousands. Another situation where I've never seen anything like this before. AND the people on the street were for the most part cheering them on. You can see this in one of the pictures below. And by the way so were the police.

The fourth from the last picture shows the reverse shot looking towards Concorde and you can get a sense of the size of this protest although without an aerial shot it is impossible to capture its true size.

An exciting day in Paris

Auto Guru in Europe