Parking In Paris

Well put simply its not easy, for a kick off as most of the traffic appears to spend most of its time stationary, cruising looking for a suitable parking space is just about impossible. Then when the traffic does get on the move you cannot stop no matter how many suitable parking spaces you have spotted. This is because the traffic box you in on all sides and hoot aggressively if you dare to hint you are considering slowing down, let alone stop. I guess in Paris moving for a driver is a luxury they are not keen to give up without a fight.

Drinking coffee in a cafe situated in a busy, narrow side street just off the Place de Concorde and opposite the Buddha Bar, I watched as this cool guy showed all the outward signs he was going to try and park. Mr Cool wore a dark suit, crisp white shirt, red and yellow tie and the darkest 50's styled RayBans I have seen and he was driving a massive black Merc. I already had a dislike for him, so watching him attempt to park this mammoth of a machine into a space which was clearly too small was going to be fun, no it was going to be a pleasure.

I have no idea what model Merc this was, because in keeping with the worlds coolest city it had been de-badged, which is code for if you want to know what model it is, you are uncool. All I can say is it was big, very big and I'm not talking starship Enterprise big, no this was more the size of the galaxy that Enterprise zooms around in.To be very honest I would have trouble parking this on the centre spot of an empty football pitch, if I had been told I couldn't move the goalposts.

What added to my excitement was that Mr Cool was going to attempt to park not only in a small space, but one that had a shinny new black Jaguar 4x4 thing on one end and an equally new looking green Aston Martin at the other. On the cards here was the chance to witness a very, very, very expensive slow speed three car accident. But to my amazement and I have to say disappointment this cool guy managed it with zero fuss and in only about 4 movements. What made it even worse was, as he switched his engine off and turned his head to look in my direction I could see he had managed to do the impossible, whilst on the bloody phone. Whereas I fully agree that its very naughty to drive a vehicle whilst talking on a mobile phone, I have to say this was pretty impressive.

So there we have it, in the worlds coolest city, a cool guy in a big cool car managed to park it in a small space in the most cool of cool ways. But could it be that the real cool thing was that the car parked itself as all the best cool cars seem to be able to do nowadays. How cool is that?