Sunday night sunset

Unfortunately it wasn't this Sunday but it was still a Sunday. This from inside the courtyard at the Louvre last Sunday. Somehow we've never made it there for sunset but it worked out pretty well. We were chased away from our favorite location on the Pont des Arts (a walking bridge over the Seine) while showing new friends around Paris. The bridge has now become overrun with drug dealers and junkies, some of whom are itching to get violent. I don't know what the heck is going on in Paris these days between seeing charred motor scooters and now this horrible experience. Over decades of visiting Paris including sleeping on the streets back in the 1980s while traveling as a student and then living in this fabulous city, I'm witnessing some low points.

Our favorite Pont des Arts is flooded with drug dealers, one of whom flipped out and started to become aggressive with us and four women. Somehow the police are nowhere to be found and the second you step on the bridge you see your first dealer. They walk back and forth all night looking for business. I suspected our crazed dealer who wanted to get violent with us was a runner, delivering supplies to his friends walking the bridge who he knew. For a traditionally safe city that welcomes tourists from around the world, Paris has some problems right now. Letting violent drug dealers occupy such a heavily visited tourist sight in the middle of town is disappointing.

All of this comes not too long after seeing and hearing of countless burned motor scooters in otherwise safe neighborhoods. This is also not that long after a visiting friend had the back pocket of his pants slashed while three (there are always three) hooligans jammed the Metro Solferino escalator near the Musee d'Orsay. Apparently that gig was going on for quite some time but I hear the Orsay isn't very popular with tourists so it probably doesn't matter, right? Is it a sign of the times or are these experiences simply one-off examples? I don't know but I sure never saw much of this in the past here. On the positive side of things, it did give us an opportunity to find a new spot for photos. Hooray for that.