My father and I were visiting Paris together for a long weekend at the start of spring break, looking to do some sightseeing and practice my French. We had just left a nice restaurant, located along a quiet avenue, and across a colorful, polka-dotted building that held the Louis Vuitton offices. They were empty and desolate from having finished their busiest time of the year, Fashion Week, according to our waiter at the restaurant. Since it was very dark out, once my father and I stepped out of the building, we headed straight back to our AirBnB apartment, as we did not want to be out in the open late at night in fear of possible muggings.

The first few blocks on the way back to the apartment were uneventful, as the street we were on stayed fairly quiet. However, suddenly, we heard loud chanting, and before we knew it, there was a loud, dedicated crowd of French protesters a block behind us, approaching rapidly. We decided to cut to our left, into a small alleyway, to avoid the protesters. Instead of leaving the scene from there, though, my father and I decided to stay and watch the mob pass by. Even though I knew some French, and had been using it here and there throughout our trip, the shouting of the protesters was indistinct to me, since I am not very good at making out loud noises. As they marched down the avenue, the protesters would occasionally set a trashcan or a pile of trash ablaze, prompting action from the firetruck and firefighters slowly trailing behind them. When the large group continued onto the next block, a platoon of about four or five police officers, clad in S.W.A.T. gear, rushed by to chase after the protesters. They each held a large, rectangular, transparent shield and a jet-black baton, which they raised up towards their heads, yelling in unison. It was then that we thought things would get violent, so my father and I decided to take a detour and leave.

That was not the end of our experience with the protesters, however. Once we arrived back on the street of our rented apartment, we decided to walk around our area a bit, and perhaps grab dessert somewhere. As we walked along the streets of our residence beside another grand avenue, lined with large department stores and cafés, and walked across it to reach a creperie, we witnessed the mob reappear down the large road. The protesters had begun engulfing more trash in flames, prompting the appearance of more firemen and S.W.A.T. teams. We watched them all pass by the corner on which the creperie stood, except this time, the protesters were all repeatedly chanting, “Paris, Paris Paris Paris!” It was at this point that I felt the situation had greatly escalated from when we had seen it by the restaurant.

As a result of the protests, the creperie my father and I were at was closing before we could sit down, so my father insisted that we go to a calmer area. Even though the protesters had essentially passed our neighborhood at this point my anxiety was kicking in, so I decided that we should head back to the apartment for the night. So we did. Though we knew we would be coming to Paris for vacation during a time of civil unrest, we did not think it would be much of a problem with what we wanted to do there. Hence, I am glad we came when we did, because several days after we left, the Louvre, which we saved for our final full day in Paris, was barred by museum workers who too had joined in on the protests. This was probably the case for other attractions as well, but not when we visited the city.

During my previous days in Paris, I made small talk with taxi drivers, tour guides, and others. The protests were a common topic that came up, expectedly, but the conversations I had made me aware that the subject of the protests, being the raised retirement age, was part of a much larger issue for the French. People disliked the current French leader, President Macron, and governmental decisions across his years in office had taken a toll on the working class, with taxes being high and morale being low. Additionally, with a declining birth rate and the retirement ordeal, the future of the French economy and overall economic opportunity was looking uncertain; I believed this was a side-reason for the protests after talking to these people. However, if there was one lesson I could take away from this whole experience, it would be that there is no shame in standing up against what you disagree with, even if others view the problem to be as minuscule as the retirement age being raised from 62 to 64. For this, I can respect the French.