We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this important news announcement:

Last week, thirty people were struck by lightning.  This week there has been a metro strike that has closed down a third of the subways going into the city.  And now Paris is flooding!  The river Seine floods occasionally, but this year, THIS week, the one week out of 52 this year that we could have come to Paris, it is flooding worse than in 60 years.  It is now closing subways and trains. Our dinner boat ride down the Seine was canceled and it closed the Louvre today. Now it has closed the roads we were going to use to go see all the Chateaux’, including THIS most famous Chateaux de Chambord.

Here are some of the pictures we’ve gotten of the flooding in Paris.

This is the Pont Mirabeau Bridge in Paris.  It usually looks like this:

Today it looked like this:

Below is a video of another bridge in Paris near the Hotel de Ville, the seat of Paris city government. It shows the sidewalks beside the Seine flooded pretty well and gives you a good look at the city too. Please excuse my horrible mispronunciation of the River Seine.  We hadn’t heard it pronounced right at this point.  It is pronounced Sen.  

On our train ride home from Versailles today, the water was almost up to the train tracks and right outside the window.

They stopped our train several times and then went very slowly the last 5 minutes of the ride because there was water on the tracks.  Ironically enough, the Eiffel tower is in the background.

This view of the walkway next to our train shows the water leaking through the wall onto the pavement.  The river is just on the other side of that wall and above our heads.

This is a video of actual leaking.

This view shows the river on the left, way higher than normal and our train down below on the right.  They closed this subway/train right after we got off.

When we got down to the underground part of the subway right near here to get back to our hotel, you could hear the water leaking from the roof!  It sounded like it was raining in the subway!!!

Crazy times, folks!  They say the water level was supposed to peak today, so things shouldn’t get too much worse.  I’m crossing my fingers the Louvre is not closed tomorrow too!  Ironically enough, it hasn’t really rained much since we got here.  And we’ve been able to see and do plenty.  Still having a fabulous time!!!  

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.