Paris 2011 - there was a small fire by the hotel

John and I were doing a quick research on where we would like to have dinner that evening, and all of a sudden the hotel alarm went off!

We took the stairs down to the lobby, and saw the guy at the front desk slightly panicking. He tried to explain to us in English of what was happening. I didn't quite understand him, but I was pretty sure he was trying to say that there was smoke on the top floor but he was not sure. He called the fire department already. He also instructed us to wait in the lobby for a bit.

As we waited some more guests at the hotel came downstairs. A girl was probably in the shower because when she came down her hair was still dripping.

We waited in the lobby for a little bit, then went outside to get some fresh air.


At first we saw some light smoke that seemingly was coming out of the hotel building.

Then a couple fire trucks showed up.

And I say this in a very respectful way: the firefighters looked very futuristic.

They were ready to roll.

I then saw the hotel front desk guy came out, talked to the firefighters, and a couple firefighters ran upstairs in the hotel. They then came down and said something to the hotel guy and left. He later told us the firefighters checked everywhere in the hotel, and determined that the alarm was sensitive (which was good,) and detected the smoke coming from the building next door, where the fire was supposed to have broken out.


When the firefighters started going into the building where the smoke came out, we could see more clearly where the fire was.

I was glad no one was hurt, and it was cool I got to see Parisian firefighters! It was an unexpected and interesting experience.