Bastille Day - 14 of July - Part 2 - Fireworks

The Bastille Day adventure continues.............

After battling the crowd at the Défilé Militaire in the morning, we decided to take the afternoon off and just relax at home, before facing our next battle: the crowd of people going to the Eiffel Tower to watch the fireworks. I guess this is karma in action and getting us back. In Vancouver we lived 3 blocks from Kits beach, and could simply walk down to the beach to watch the annual Symphony of Fire or Celebration of Light fireworks competition. Then we would stroll back home, in the sea of people, and stand on our patio and watch the gong show of cars, buses, people, strollers, bikes, taxis, tow trucks, rollerbladers and drunks, all fighting their way up the streets to get out of town. 4-5 hours of people accumulation all trying to leave at the same time.


No such luck here. If we wanted to see the fireworks we had to prepare for battle. So off to the store for some roasted chicken (we don't have an oven), some cheese, wine, bread and the other usuals. We arrived just after 6pm. Yup, it was pretty crowded already. Before the fireworks there was a Johnny Hallyday, and guests, concert. Johnny Hallyday is one of the biggest rock starts in France, but he's from Belgium and lives in Switzerland - go figure! We met up with our friends Thierry and Aurélien for a picnic on a postage stamp size piece of grass. Thank goodness for cells phones otherwise finding eachother in a crowd of 700,000 people simply wouldn't have worked!

Since the sun sets about 45 minutes later in Paris, the fireworks didn't start until about 11pm, but it was worth the wait. It was the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower and the city/country decided to spend a bit more than usual. They actually used the Eiffel Tower as a screen, and projected images onto it spanning the 120 years. They even projected the image of the tower itself, then twisted it and made it jump, so it really looked like it was alive. Amazing!

Here is a short YouTube clip I found: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zw2E_v5AW8


After the show, karma came back to haunt us again: thousands of people all leaving the area, getting on the roads in cars and buses, on bikes and in the metro. I think we walked about halfway home until we figured it was safe to find a metro that wasn't a sardine can.

A great day for us, and a great day for France.

More pics posted here: picasaweb.google.com/DKSPENCE76