Hoping to end on a positive note, here are my 'Cons and Pros'...
- The After-hours Scene
There isn't so much of a festival night-life as at Glastonbury (club tents, Shangri-la et al). The festival ends when the music ends and back at the campsite there is one bar which was dead on the Friday night, but busy the other two (mainly full of Brits). Next time I'd go with a bigger crowd (or maybe not fall asleep exhausted at midnight on Friday night..)
-The Cost
Drinks were expensive, at €5 a pint, and bringing drinks on site was forbidden. However, you can bring as much as you like into the campsite (admittedly a fair hike from the festival) and there is a Lidl selling ridiculously cheap booze nearby, so it's easy to get by with only a few eye-watering beer purchases.
+The Cost
No, I'm not contradicting myself. With Reading and Leeds charging just under £200 (not including getting there!) for the same weekend, Rock en Seine was a steal: €109 for the 3 day pass, €45 between 2 for camping, plus £46 for the Megabus to Paris, which worked out at around £150 each. That's right, it's actually cheaper to go to a festival in a different country! But that's not even the best bit...
+ THERE ARE SHOWERS!
They may have been cold, they may not have been particularly powerful, but anyone who's been to a festival in the UK knows that virtually queue-free individual 'porta'-showers are a massive festival luxury. Also the toilets don't smell. Incredible.
+ The Line-up
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Of Monsters and Men, Beach House, The Black Keys, Ed Sheeran, Sigur Ros, Caravan Palace (weird and wonderful French band) and many others. I hadn't heard of half of the bands we most enjoyed before looking them up, so we made some brilliant discoveries. There was some fantastic musicianship from the Orchestre Nationale de l'Ile de France performing with Get Well Soon and the multi-talented bands behind Of Monsters and Men and Caravan Palace (we definitely saw one woman playing a trumpet, a marimba, a bass drum, a synth and singing in the same set). Not one disappointment for the whole weekend - and I'm fussy.
+The People
Everyone was friendly, there were plenty of Brits and most French people we met were willing to speak English. There is so much space per person, particularly in the campsite, since most people stay in hotels or are Parisians with a day pass. There's not much pushing and shoving to get to the front, and nobody threw any piss-missiles; always a bonus.
In short, I'm going again.
