Nuit blanche

La Nuit Blanche was more interesting than fun. I HATE crowds! There were unbelievable numbers of people, and more coming as of 3 AM (when we headed home). Including scary drunk young males who would sometimes suddenly start growling and chasing random females (like Gina, who did the knee-to-the-balls move, and Jane who, an hour later, did an evasive little run).

We started out around 11 pm at the Sacre Coeur. Some guy was conducting 300 electric guitars on the parvis. The effect was interesting, but the crowds! We had luckily come up from the side, but when heading down, we used the central staircase and got at one point caught in a narrow passage of barely moving people for 20 minutes. We tried to hear an all-night organ concert down the hill, but it looked like we'd be in line for 2 hours. We then headed across town to Chatelet (on foot, since the metros had shut for the night and there were probably 10,000 people, literally, trying to catch a cab). In St. Eustache there was a woman making funny screechy noises with a double-bass and occasionally making little shrieking noises with her own voice; she was drowned out by the loud rock concert going on outside. Finally, we went to the Hotel de Ville, where there was some game people played, involving jumping as fast as they could on little colored squares that were being beamed down from above. Two teams of people competed. Meanwhile, on a large screen behind there were movies of people in the daytime rushing about the square in front of the Hotel de Ville.

Finally, we headed home by bus. We fought with masses of people to get onto a night bus at Chatelet (including more drunk young men using physical force to get on before others). Unfortunately, Jane suddenly felt claustrophobic and got off, so the two of us ended up walking home (Gina & Claire, in the meantime, took the bus back and, with the traffic jams, arrived 5 minutes before us).