Paris- Bastille Day

Editor's Warning: Contains many, many pictures of the Eiffel Tower.


My first night in Paris there was a group of people from the hostel going out to see the Eiffel Tower's light show on the hour. It lasted about five minutes but it was a good couple hours' worth of entertainment, meeting up in the hostel bar, taking the metro over to the tower and getting acquainted, sitting down on the Champs de Mars and watching the show, and then walking up to the tower itself to take pictures and talk about crepes and climbing the tower.

The next morning there was a military parade but we understandably woke up a little late for it. After another metro ride and a terrifying few minutes packed into the exit of the metro station, we made it out onto the street and followed the sound of military men singing military songs as the parade continued past us. Squad after squad came from branches of the military that I couldn't differentiate, other than maybe the Navy and the Air Force.

This had to be my favorite- the Regiment of Awesome Beards

Sometimes women were to be found in the ranks but most of the time not. We spent a few hours of that morning standing on the street corner, listening to the policeman as he told us to step back and make way, going up on our tiptoes to see a marching band or tanks.

After the parade was over there was a still a crushingly large amount of people on the streets. Christine made her way back to the hostel while I stood around for a few minutes and then made my slow way over towards the Place de la Concorde, thinking this would be a great time to see the sights by the Champs Elysees and eventually get down to the Arc de Triomph. This proved to be a fruitless endeavor, however, and I only salvaged the end of the morning and early afternoon by taking a quick tour of La Madeline and the statues outside of it. The sky threatened rain, so I too retreated to the hostel.

We had heard that there would be fireworks that you could see from the Eiffel Tower and I had heard about a concert on the Champs de Mars, so I headed over there "early" to get a seat. By the time I was there, though, most of the grass was already full of people. The concert wasn't due to start for another half an hour at least and yet people had already claimed patches of land all the way back to the military school on the opposite end of the Champs de Mars from the Eiffel Tower. I took of my jacket and tried to spread out as much as possible, saving space for Christine and a few other friends from the hostel whenever they got there.

The concert was interesting to me, to say the least. They started out with Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough in English and then there was an excerpt from Dr. King's I Have A Dream Speech, in English, the bit that included the red hills of Georgia, which the crowd cheered about. There were songs and dances and a lot of Michael Jackson and after each performance the MC came back out and the artists talked about what equality and the end of discrimination meant to them. The whole event was a concert for equality and it was fascinating to hear their thoughts, filted through the French that I knew and the French at which I guessed.

I had hoped the field would clear a bit as the sky darkened and the concert ended, but it seemed that most people were there for the fireworks display just as we were. Christine and the guys from the hostel had arrived partway through the concert and every once in a while we would stand up and sing along to an American song, and especially to Let the Sunshine In, which was in French on the verses and back to its original English on the chorus. We waited as the sun sank lower and lower, giving an increasingly beautiful view of the tower and the sunset, until it was dark, the concert ended, the only lights around us the huge view screens that had been set up. Eventually these went out too and we stood and stared, impatient for the first boom.

The announcement of the fireworks show was in French and then in English, making my garbled translation for my friends a little useless. It was a show set to famous songs from musicals and from the opening statement of the overture to Candide to whatever amazing song they picked to end the show with, I was amazed. I Could Have Danced All Night rang through my head even as they moved on to Singing in the Rain, Joanna from Sweeney Todd, and to the loudest cheers, Temps de Cathedrali, from Notre Dame de Paris. I sang along to every song I knew, which was fine because my mouth would have been open anyway, staring at the single most beautiful fireworks display I had ever seen or imagined. There were claps and cheers and a huge swelling of applause at the end, and we finally smelled the sulfur from the used firecrackers as the stood and waited for the crowd to thin out, arguing over our favorite song  and discussing the merits of the show.

The walk back was taken leisurely, knowing that we should probably head for a metro stop a few stops away from the one we had taken to get us close to the Eiffel Tower. At one point we crossed a bridge over the Seine and just as I had stopped talking and gawked at the Eiffel Tower the first time I saw it, I stopped and then squeaked and ran to the stone rail of the bridge, looking out over the river I had heard about, had read about, had seen in pictures and drawings but never with my own eyes observed. Just as I had had difficulty believing that I was in Rome seeing the Colosseum, so now I had a few moments of amazed wonderment at the fact that I was actually in Paris.

All of that aside, we decided it was time to get on the metro. We walked to the nearest stop we could find and flowed with the crowd down to the platform. We let one train pass, thinking that it'll surely be less crowded on the next. It wasn't, but we waded the river of people leaving the platform and got closer to the doors. The next train, we got closer. The next, one of us got on, pushed by the now-crushing crowd behind us almost desparate to get on the train. We waved as he looked concerned back at us. The next train we vowed to get on, but allowed a small family to be pushed on together as opposed to any of the four of us left. The next train, one of us managed to get on again. The final three of us pushed our way farther up the platform and got on the next train comparatively easily, pushed up again against the wall of humanity that the inside of the metro had become.

We began our walk to the next train to which we were changing when one of us heard from another person on the platform that this next train was the last one of the evening. I'm not entirely sure why the last train in Paris struck such fear into our hearts, but it did, and we began to run to the platform. We bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and one of the guys from the hostel and I jumped on the train with seconds to spare. The buzzer sounded and we turned to see Christine at the top of the stairs. She heard the sound and, knowing from the signs in French and in English that three seconds would elapse between the sounding of the buzzer and the shutting of the metro door, she sprinted from the top step to the cart. She swung onto the metro just as the doors closed, hitting the guy from the hostel on the back as he attempted to block the doorway.

We three looked around and laughed nervously, panting a little with our efforts and I said, "Let's never do that again." In fact, I believe we pinky-swore to never do that again, though Christine later said, "Why not? That was kinda fun."

Which, in fact, was true.

Fin.