Day 37- Thursday 14 July

Bastille Day! Because I'd gone to sleep so late to the point where it was almost pointless for me not to just continue my day, I missed the parade on the Champs-Elysees. It actually ended up waking me up anyways, though, as the planes who did the flyby at the end happened to fly directly over our apartment. So then I slept for a little while more, then got up, had brunch, and figured, because it was their independence day, that I should visit the nearby Bastille, because that's where everything went down, what, 222 years ago [222, that's weird]. There was a huge line outside the building I'd only recently managed to identify as the Opera Bastille, and I figured Whatever; rounding the corner to the grand staircase, a woman asked me where the line was, and I told her it was Just over there, and asked what was going on. She said that in about an hour there was going to be a free ballet, and surprisingly it took me about thirty whole seconds to make up my mind to go [that's a long time].

I got a seat just to the left of the center, three rows back on the first balcony, not too bad, and the ballet [which I'd gone to with absolutely no idea what it was about], freaked me out, I had noooooo clue what the heck was happening, there were a lot of lights and flesh-coloured underwear and just, I had no, no idea what the hell was happening [my ballet experience consists of The Nutcracker and information from movies and eating disorder documentaries], but once I got used to it and stopped being such a prude, ended up enjoying it, especially how they set up the stage, just these two giant vertical things that interrupted the lights in interesting ways and rotated sometimes, the whole time, and of course watched people doing things that looked like they really hurt, being able to lick their knees if they wanted to and jumping around everywhere. It must have been really good, to the connoisseurs of the audience, because they did five group encore bows, and then a lot more repeats of individuals and pairs. Exiting, I now know it's called 'The Anatomy of Sensation,' and that the Times wasn't wickedly impressed, so I guess people were just happy it was free .... ?

Exiting, I then took the metro to the lower end of the Champs, because I'd gotten a confirmed report from Melissa that it was decorated, and it was, with flags running the length of it between trees, so I window shopped again up to the Arc and lost my head and tried to buy stamps from the post office on a national holiday, you know, whatever. A group of Spaniards asked me to take their photo shoot, and it ended up being an epic awkward mess as I repeatedly photographed my fingers, somehow, but there were plenty of other tourists for them to try again. I sat there on a bench for a while, enjoying Life and Paris, then decided to go get my place at the Eiffel Tower.

This ended up being a bit of a wreck- the nearest two bridges were blocked off, a lot of streets were blocked off, it took a long time pretty much just to cross the river, but following the mass, our collective intelligence got us there eventually. There was a pretty view from the bridge, of the Tour, the Seine, Sacre Coeur in the distance and other famous pointy buildings in between, and I considered staying there, knowing full well by now that it was going to be ten kinds of crazy on the Champs de Mars [the field south of la Tour Eiffel], but ended up being very glad that I didn't. Grabbing a good spot on the sidewalk of the avenue crossing the Champs, there were large screens showing the live broadcast and concert happening just before the Tour, which was good entertainment during my wait of four hours [though it ended up being closer to five, they started the fireworks a bit late], famous French pop singers, some random American rappers and then just some random people performing, and I could hear the crowd screaming both from where it actually was and from the speakers of the broadcast simultaneously. It was great, and I remembered to bring suntan lotion, and when the fireworks did come, after the almost-full moon had risen over the Ecole Militaire, after the sun had set and the sky was its usual not-night color of blue, after what the television host had said that 1.2 million people were filling the park, they were fantastic.

The introduction to the fireworks was great; first a broadcaster said the usual banalities that I don't even remember, but then a weird Irish-French woman started to repeat everything in English, and instantly half a million people started booing and I didn't make out any of what she said because they kept it up the entire time, hilarious. But yeah, serious fireworks, they had a musical thing going, mostly American musical scores, that they set them to, Hello Dolly, a bit from Sweeny Todd, Singing in the Rain, some French stuff, Evita, Cats, a lot more, serious, serious fireworks, huge, ones I'd never seen before, sparkly green ones, ones that were shaped like things [recognizable hearts and roses with stems, amazing], huge glittery coppery ones, ones that burst into spheres that changed color starting from one direction and gradienting evenly over to the opposite side [hard to describe, reallllly cool], I don't even remember, which is sad, but they were great, really good fireworks.

Getting back was a bit of an issue, as a million people migrated eastwards into the city by foot, inundating the avenues for blocks and blocks, stopping traffic completely, police in armour everywhere, it was actually kind-of fun. I walked to Saint Michel for the water fountain, and because it was Gyro Day, of course, ate in front of Notre Dame, then decided to mosey back to the apartment. It was a bit after one am, and a trio stopped me and asked if I was from the area, and I said No, but I have a map if you want to use it, and they did, and I asked if they were trying to get to their hotel, I guess on the severely far off chance I was familiar with it, and they said no, they were going to a sapeur-pompier bal, and they figured out where it was and invited me to come, so I did. They were Helen, from Paris, Charlotte, from the south of France, and Robin, from London, and it was fantastic, just fantastic.

a very fancy alarm clock:

a bit of the inside of the Opera Bastille as seen from the back of the first balcony, where you can see a bit of the orchestra pit, boxes, the second balcony, opera stuff:

a mini-demonstration outside on the steps:

the decorated Champs-Elysees:

the most digestible photo of my photo shoot, I had no idea that she just kept going, I thought she was having trouble getting a good angle:

this, for the record, is where I sat for four hours, and could thankfully see about half the television to watch the concert:

a bit of the sunset, again for the record:

at the end of the concert, lights blasting, the Eiffel Tower fulfilling its lighthouse duties, waiting, waiting ....

I didn't take many photos of the fireworks, just enjoyed them for the half hour or so they went on, but here you can see they had really strong spot lights, and you can't see it too well, but they lit up the smoke in blue and white and made it look a bit like abalone, 'cool' isn't even a word in comparison to how it was, everything:

tried to take a photo of the rose fireworks:

at this bit, the announcer told people to raise their cell phones to 'make their own fireworks,' and counted down, and when he hit one everyone raised their phone [or lighter], and at that point, halfway through the evening, for the first time the sparkle lights came on and the hundreds of thousands all screamed in troglodytic approval that crossed all language barriers, and it was amazing:

this is what it looked like at the end, a heck of a lot of smoke, but thankfully with a wind to move it:

you can't imagine how many people there were, I don't even know and I was there: