day 15: bastille day et plus étudiant

Date: Monday, July 14th, 2008

This morning a group of us met downstairs at 9:30AM to check out the parade. Of course we were stopped by tons of human traffic and since we departed rather late (at least I think it's because we left later) the main stops along the Champs-Elysee were closed on Line 1 so we took it all the way to the end, at Charles de Gaulle-Etoile. It wasn't too bad, except that we got off at Champs Elysee-Clemenceau thinking we could outsmart the French but alas, our folly only made it clearer that we need to learn how to speak and understand French... Zak thought he heard the conductor say that the Champs Elysee stop was only open for transfers, but most of us (who don't understand French at all / as well) thought we'd 'give it a shot.' In any case that was a minor setback.

We saw all sorts of neat things once we finally got above ground again. (The lines in the metro were atrocious.) Most notable (for us, since there were several rows of people all along the Champs Elysee that we had to try to see over) were the fly overs. The first one we saw was a group of planes with colored exhaust--bleu, blanc, et rouge!

I studied for the rest of the day, mostly trying to get into the reading and untangling some information I had mixed up. Around 9PM a bunch of us got together to see the fireworks. A lot better than finding the parade because we took the 6 and got off at an open air stop so there was none of that crazy mob-ness. Although...when we DID get nearer to the Eiffel Tower, the mob awaiting the fireworks was already huge. We managed to find a spot by the Seine, high enough to give us as view of the fireworks at Trocadero. Crazy as it sounds, the crowd actually got bigger towards 11pm--there were so many people!

I tried to balance my time between filming the fireworks to keep as a nice memory and actually appreciating them on their own. In these videos, I usually keep the bulk of the show in the frame, but sometimes I tried to watch the actual show and sometimes my arms got tired. Also just to give an idea of the scale of these fireworks: I took 6 other videos and these videos only capture maybe 1/4 of the show. Definitely better than Disneyland. (Haha)





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