How we got there

I heard my uncle was going to drive to Paris on friday, I didn’t hesitate to ask if I could hitch a ride with him and maybe take a friend with me. My awesome uncle said it was no problem at all and we arranged a pickup point and time. Breda central station 16:00.

A week before I went to Amsterdam where me and a group of other traceurs/freerunners were filmed for a book trailer. The camera guys made awesome shots but (unfortunately) the trailer turned out shit. I asked in the group chat of that shooting day if someone wanted to join me for a weekend in Paris. Ilya replied first, we didn’t care that we didn’t really know each other, we just started planning.

Me and my new friend Ilya, excited as we were, were far too early in Breda. We decided to explore the city and train for a bit. The city was okay, we had some food at the park, walked around and found some small spots to train on.

France

After a 6 hour drive we arrived in Rueil-Malmaison and went to bed. On Facebook I asked if anyone of the Paris freerun community wanted to show us around, luckily one guy (Mathieu) replied to meet up at la Défense. Also I read that another Dutch parkour friend (Luciano) would be in Paris for the weekend, I sent him a message saying what time I’d be at la Défense.

In the morning the sun was out, and it was HOT! We had a stroll through the park, checked out Fort du Mont Valérien, did some jumps and headed towards la Défense. The road we needed to take was one big dangerous downhill with lots of traffic. Ilya brought his penny board, and I had my longboard with me, but the hill was way too steep so we were constantly footbraking.

Parkour

When we arrived at the spot where Mathieu wanted to meet, there were some other guys climbing and jumping around. The place was awesome, lots of walls and platforms on different heights, perfect for parkour! We hugged the guys who were training (every traceur hugs) and joined them to train. After a short while Mathieu and a couple of his friends arrived. We chatted and jumped a bit, but he wanted to go to some different spot.

Just when we dropped our bags at the new spot, it started to rain. We decided to go to the mall to get something to eat, then Luciano texted me and said he was inside that mall! When we found him inside, he was with a group of guys from French Freerun Family (they're quite famous to us). He bumped into them by coincidence but they unfortunately had to go somewhere else.

We were hungry so we decided to go to the supermarket. After a long walk through the huge mall we found it, it was the biggest I had ever been in: 3 storeys high, around 30 different brands of sandwiches, 300 different wines. It took some time to find the products I wanted, I was glad they had everything I needed :) When we got outside it was still raining, Mathieu suggested we’d go to a underground parking garage. When we got there, there were already a lot of people training. We (of course) hugged everyone, warmed up an had a great session! We were with around 20 people, all training, so that was an awesome experience! One day in France and already a lot of friends!

Goodbye new friends

In the evening Ilya and I said goodbye to the group. We had decided to explore some more and take a different route back to my uncle's place.
The day after we went sightseeing but didn't see anything special. We didn't have enough time to go to Paris itself because of the Blablacar we arranged for the trip home. It was our first time taking a Blablacar and it was a great experience. The Dutch driver and his French girlfriend were really nice. They were around my age (22) and made the trip often because of the long distance relationship. We chatted for a while, then I fell asleep…

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