Bastille Day- Night

For dinner on Bastille Day, the nuns went all out with a couple of treats: a bottle of Coca-Cola on each table and Ketchup! We didn't have french fries or anything that required it, but it seems to be an acknowledged fact in Paris that Americans can't have a meal if it doesn't involve ketchup somehow. They also had cute Bastille Day napkins with little guillotine's on them (just kidding, it was just french flags and firecrackers, but one can wish).

We had decided to watch the fireworks from the Pont Des Artistes, so Don, Gina, the Cecilias, Meredith, Rose and I headed over right after dinner to get a good spot. Even though we got there three hours before the show, we were only able to get sitting room in the middle. But, we were prepared with wine, chocolate, and more of the loaf of Poulain bread though, so it was all good.
The fireworks were scheduled for 10:45, and by the time 9pm rolled around the bridge was packed. We had secured a pretty cool spot though, so we waited anxiously for the light show.

At around 10:50, they started...and they were just "eh". US fireworks would kick their ass. Supposedly by the Champs de Mars they had a full-on opera choir and the lights were synchronised to the music. From the bridge, we were able to see just about the top half of the explosions over the trees. And the only thing we heard was the crowd noise from the bridge. Oh, and some guy with a guitar playing Bob Marley songs, but he was hardly synchronised, and he only knew the chorus. But it was still fun to hang out (unfortunately, I still went home with bread).

Below, through the magic of photo enlargement (we live in an age of wonders), you can enjoy a picture of the fireworks. In reality, what we saw was ultra tiny. But in solidarity with my host country, let's all pretend they were huge, and that whichever of the three tenors is still alive is singing a jolly aria.

Bastille Day- Day

Bastille Day! The day of French independence and be-headings. But how does it compare to the 4th of July?

The first similarity is that we had no school that day. Yay! (I need a break from the imparfait and the passe composse. It's all in the past french people, pick a tense.) But that's the only day we got off. What happenned to the day before Bastille Day? or the day after? How do the french recover from the cheese and wine pique-niques? Regardless, and since everyone was still recovering from the Fireman's Ball, Don and I set set off to walk around.

We started off walking towards the Pantheon, since we heard that it was a good place to view the fireworks that night and we were scoping out locations. There was indeed a nice view of the Eiffel Tower from there, and the building itself was garlanded with red, white , and blue banners, which was very festive.

Don heard that all the national museums were free in celebration of BD. So we tried to go into the Pantheon and found out that it was not the case -a marketing ploy perhaps?-,and the museums were still charging and they wouldn't accept student IDs for discounts. So not feeling up to visiting another gravesite so early in the morning, we decided to pass.

Also, there were huge tanks on the street, probably heading to the Champs Elysses for the parade. It was still a little jarring to see huge armed vehicles going down a small city street though. I felt like I was in "Red Dawn" all of a sudden.

Then we walked around most of the day, just getting a feel for the city. A lot of the government buildings were decorated lightly with banners, but overall, there weren't any full on decorations going on. And no one wished us a Happy Bastille Day at the coffee shops or anythings. Very mellow.

We had decided to watch the fireworks from one of the bridges on the Seine, so we stopped by the Monoprix to get cheese and wine (and t-shirts for me since I was running out of clean ones and the nuns were all booked for laundry service). From there we headed back to the dorms meet up with everyone else.