Bastille Day and a Lazy Sunday

Yesterday was July 14th, otherwise known as Bastille Day here in France.  Initially, we wanted to get up early to see the military parade on the Champs-Elysees, but the weather was on and off rain, and to see anything we were told we'd have to be there at least two hours before the parade began.  Which would mean getting up before 7am.  Needless to say that was not happening.


Instead we slept in, then went out for a nice lunch.  My roommates and I walked down Saint-Germain until we found a café that looked good.  I ended up having a fantastic lunch of walnut salad, veal, mashed potatoes, and coke from a glass bottle.  One of my favorite things about France by far is their beverages.  The sodas are all made with real cane sugar (unless you order diet), coke comes in glass bottles, and France is the home of Orangina, a soda that I will suffer from missing when I go back home.  Needless to say, lunch was delicious.  I felt a little guilty for eating a baby animal, but once I started eating the veal smothered in gravy with portabella mushroom chunks, I got over my guilt.


We didn't leave the café until close to 4pm, after which we slowly walked back to the Foyer.  We were all tired (and in food comas) so we ended up napping for a little after getting back.  Eventually we woke up and made a late dinner.


After dinner, Kelcie, Brittany, and I hopped on the metro and headed to the Eiffel Tower for the fireworks.  It was insanely crowded. There were people on the sidewalks, in the streets, everywhere.  Of course there were also police in riot gear everywhere too, which was both reassuring and a bit nerve-wracking.

When we finally managed to get onto the Champs de Mars, in front of the Eiffel Tower, we couldn't find a single place on the lawn.  We ended up a little to the right of the Eiffel Tower, but still with a great view.

The fireworks began at 11pm, with all the lights shutting off on the Eiffel Tower.  The display was without a doubt the best fireworks I'd ever seen.  They were in perfect rhythm and time with the light show and the music.  The theme for this years display was disco so they had speakers playing disco music, a disco ball hanging from the Eiffel Tower, and a laser lights show to go with the fireworks.

It was a ton of fun, and I recognized almost all of the music!  There were only four French disco songs in the entire thirty minute show.  I was a little surprised by that, but I guess it's to be expected when disco was a predominately American trend.

After the show, we hung out on the Champs de Mars for about 30 minutes to wait for the crowds to die down, then we walked back to the Foyer.  Well, at least part of the way, since we managed to find a metro station that wasn't too crowded eventually.  The city was unbelievable that night.  There were drunk people spilling out of bars everywhere, tourists wandering around lost, police cars, traffic jams at 1:30am, people wandering the streets everywhere, twenty-somethings wandering around singing La Marseillaise and drinking songs while swinging bottles of wine and cheap champagne...it was definitely a night to remember.


After sleeping in again this morning, I got up around 11am, but didn't do much.  I had a ton of homework to catch up on for the week coming up so I laid around and did homework for most of the afternoon, taking a break around 2pm to go get hot chocolate and a tart from a place nearby.  I finally finished my homework around 7pm, so then I just showered and wandered around talking to people, finally settling in to catch up on True Blood.  I'm going to bed soon now since I have an early day tomorrow and a busy week coming up.