new year's in Paris

Well, unless you enjoy having lit firecrackers thrown at you, I suggest you not bother with going to the Eiffel Tower. If you DO decide to go there, keep your cell phones and I-pods under wraps. When I was there a few years ago on New Year's Eve, there was a gang of snatchers running through the crowds snatching phones out of people's hands. I was chatting with a group of Canadians when it happened to a British family standing near us. The thieves knocked the father into us and snatched his daughter's phone out of her hand as she was talking to a friend. As for the firecrackers, yes it really did happen. The first one landed behind me and when I didn't jump as it went off, the next one hit me in the shoulder. Not nice. As for what TO do, perhaps someone who lives there and is on the boards will have a good idea. I'm thinking something along the lines of a bash at one of the major hotels might be the thing to do. Oh, and Champs Elysees wasn't any better than the Eiffel Tower according to the news reports at the time. Shopkeepers who hadn't boarded up their windows had them broken and their shops looted. Granted this WAS several years ago, but all the same, if I were there at that time of year again, I would be looking for something else to do.

Well, it may have been 9 or 10 years ago, but we had a grand time on the Champs Elysées on New Years Eve. The weather was exceedingly mild, which helped, and we just sat on the sidewalk with our bottle of wine and watched all the fun. Elderly Parisians were on all the available benches and I presumed had been there since mid-afternoon, which was clever of them. People were singing and dancing, a bunch of Germans were doing a congo line, everyone was drinking champagne and the gazillion gendarmes were just standing, arms akimbo, smiling tolerantly ... but we knew that if things got out of hand the tolerant smiles would disappear and out would come the truncheons. (I saw the police in Paris quell a student uprising one year and it was a pretty scary sight.) It was great fun and a memorable New Years Eve and it cost us only the price of our wine which we probably bought at Monoprix.

We have spent New Years in both Nice and Paris. Nice was much wilder but the locals blamed it on the Italians who come to Nice for New Years. It made a Super Bowl celebration look very tame. Lots of fireworks everywhere, the crowd didn't seen threatening in anyway but it was wild. The experience in Paris four years ago was similar and maybe a tad a tamer but not a whole lot. The police presents was high but very tolerant of the crowd behavior with bottles throw in the air, the firecrackers at your feet, etc. It was much, much wilder than anything we experienced in the US. Again, did not see any roving gangs where we were. Just be prepared for a much different experience.