The apartment rental has been a bit slow lately - hopefully it's down to the fact that the foreign media totally overreacted to the riots we had here at the end of last month. I've heard from various places that americans were advised not to travel to France, and that the media portrayed the city as being a warzone!

If I hadn't been watching the news, I would never have known anything was going on. Paris seemed to be its usual self - very very safe! However, the police chief's statement that violence was back to normal levels and that the usual number of cars (about 80!) was being burnt each night! Very reassuring...