As we sailed down the Seine in a sightseeing boat dozens of black balaclava-clad protesters across a bridge ran over our heads -followed by clouds of tear gas.
Outside of the main riot areas, Paris feels very normal.
It is the start of the school holidays here and tourists and locals alike are visiting the museums, eating patisserie and drinking coffee in pavement cafes.
Even the famed Galleries Lafayette, looted in Saturday's riots, reopened on Sunday.
In the hotspots, however, the remains of the protests, which saw hundreds of people in the city arrested, are evident.
Protests escalated at the weekend with authorities estimating that more than half a million people took to the streets to demonstrate over poor conditions in schools and the rising cost of living.
But some protests descended into rioting, with an estimated 1,500 shops and businesses looted and destroyed.
French authorities say there were 350 arrests in Paris on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said police 'lost control" in some cities as the violence escalated.
Read more: In pictures: 10 images of the protests that are spreading through France
Today, Monday, shops are boarded up and streets are scorched where piles of bikes - akin to Edinburgh's Voi bikes - were torched by protesters.
Outside Louis Vuitton on the Champs d'Elysee, workers are cleaning graffiti off a hoarding, meanwhile, the Nike shop has a boarded up window.
There are more sirens than usual and the sight of a cavalcade of four or five police vehicles screaming down the street to deal with a flare up of violence is common.
Abandoned placards are scattered along the banks of the river Seine, alongside discarded face masks.
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Last night after dinner, we took a tourist boat along the Seine, sailing past the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower, which was lit up and sparkled on the hour on cue as we passed.
Around 9.30pm, we passed under a bridge near the Chatelet area.
Dozens of black balaclava-clad protesters ran over our heads, followed by clouds of tear gas.
The smell was strong but we covered our mouths and nose and closed our eyes.
On an open top boat, our main worry was what the protesters might throw at us off the bridge but they seemed more concerned with getting away from the tear gas - and the pursuing police.
As we left the boat a few minutes later, our tour guide warned us not to turn left off the bridge as the "manifestations" last night were centred around Chatelet.
Read more: Police investigating 'threatening' hoax messages to Scottish schools
As France recovers from the worst of the unrest - which also spread to other cities - local mayors are being given the power to introduce partial curfews in some parts of the country, which the French Government says is designed to protect people and businesses.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu says local mayors are questioning how police forces organised themselves in response to rioting and looting, in order to explain how the disorder was allowed to unfold.
Getting tear gassed on holiday is not something that happens every day but at least it won't be a forgettable trip.