Les Banlieues

I made my first trip out of Paris and into the banlieues on saturday. For those of you who don't know, Paris is actually quite a small area which is made up of 20 arrondissements and is surrounded by a ring road. The other side of this ring road is no longer Paris but is made up of many banlieues which are essentially suburbs of Paris but are not considered to be Paris.

I actually made 2 trips outside the ring road on saturday. The first was to Bois de Vincennes, which is a large park with a nice lake, not far from where I live. It is similar to centenial Park in sydney but, in true european style, is packed with people sunbaking.

It is really amazing how different it is on the other side of the road. Almost all the way up to the ring road everything looks like the Paris from the movies. Tree lined streets with cute old appartment buildings with the dercorative grills filled with potted flowers, patisseries, cafes and little shops. But as soon as you cross the road everything changes, suddenly there is modern achitecture, space between buildings and wide roads. The area right around the ring road is not particularly nice. Most of the architecture is post war, high rise housing, and I believe quite a few of the banlieues are like this. But there are also alot of very nice affluent banlieues as well. And that is where I went on saturday night.

As well as being my frist trip to a real banlieue it was also my first french soirée. It was just a small dinner party at a friend's house but it was lots of fun. The banlieue she lives in is very nice, it is a little like a suburb in Sydney, in that there a bunch of shops and cafes along the main street near the train station and then streets and streets of housing with no shops or anything. The housing is still mostly appartments but the buildings are quite small and very nice and new.

Anyway we ate heaps of amazing food, drank wine and watched the football, in which France made a surprise victory over Brazil, and then had some champagne to celebrate the victory of course! Afterwards us Parisiennes caught the RER back to Paris where everyone was going completely crazy over the game. I am looking forward to the semi final on wednesday night!