Pari-Roller: an unpleasant experience and other Paris, France Sports Travel Tips

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There is an awesome opportunity to see Paris at night by way of rollerblading through the streets with hundreds of people in a huge two hour skate in the middle of the night.

The long and short of my experience was this:
The start point was easy to find and paying the fees to people working the skate was relatively easy once someone started speaking english to me. I was strongly encouraged by the skate worker to by a year membership to the Pari-Roller club so that I would have the coverage of insurance just in case I was hurt on the skate. It was a lot of extra $, but I bought it.

Everything was fine until the skate started and I was at the end of the pack of hundreds of skaters. Skate employees bring up the rear and 'herd' the group down the streets. Because I was at the end (still going very very fast I might add) employees started to yell at me frantically. Speaking only a few 'traveler's phrases' in french I just tried to skate faster to keep up. After much yelling and harassment I asked in french if someone spoke English - all the employees laughed REALLY HARD at me. In the gruffest fashion possible, I was asked to skate to the side and let everyone pass. I thought this was so I would be able to rejoin the group at the next intersection without blocking traffic. But something told me that was not the case when the last skate employee skated right up to my face, waved at my and sarcastically said - "Bye Bye!"

I was kicked out of the skate for being in the end of the pack and not going what they considered to be fast enough. I spent $50 US dollars to skate for 8 minutes and when I was kicked out of the skate I was lost, at night, in a strange city with no way to catch up to the group.

The worst part is that this was my first night in Paris and my first experience interacting with the people of France. I planned for months in advance to take this skate.

I don't want to totally bash it, so I will say, skate if you must, but be sure you are an EXCELLENT and SWIFT skater who speaks a fair amount of french.


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Website: http://www.pari-roller.com