Calvin without Hobbes: Bastille DAY!

Note: Sorry for the delayed posting, but so much has been happening that it's hard to stay focused and keep you all updated. Thanks for the viewer ship though, as I'm also in the process of reconstructing this site.

Wednesday, July 14

So I woke up late today, but here's a video recapping most of what happened for my Bastille Day celebration...

video here to come

I tried to get to Champs d'Elysees but I didn't want to miss the planes so I got off at Palais Royal since that's where the president was giving his speech. I figured that the military parade would end there... Nope.. wrong..
I got out of the metro and it was raining, so I bought an umbrella for less than 10€ because I didn't have enough and the street vendor let me have it.
I tried to follow the crowd and only saw the last two groups of people marching. It was still kinda cool to see all the different types of uniforms that everyone was in. Since France has various armies in different territories that they have relations to or occupy each country has their own uniform. There were also the fire departments and local enforcement that were marching.

Attention!

flashing lights!

When I returned to the dorms, I was really hungry not having breakfast yet. So I got a pizza, luckily they were open. I got the pescatore pizza, but tuna and salmon were both very salty. blehck...

the saltiest pizza I've ever had

Then, I bummed around... watched old episodes of 30 Rock and studied for 20min or so... ate some dinner and got ready to head out for the night. It wasn't bad, I haven't tried something like this before; the potatoes made it very filling.

Salmon Gratin avec spinach from Picard

We went to the Latin Quartier, and I was hoping to see some fireworks, but we headed out too late and by the time we got out of the metro, we could hear them going off, but we were surrounded by buildings... I was so bummed out... It's not very often you get to see fireworks and the Eiffel Tower at the same time.
We decided to head towards the fire house since it was no use to view the pyro-display in the sky. It was very interesting. The music here was much better than last night. A can of Heineken was 5€ and a bottle of champagne was 30€(that I did not buy).

some guy in our group got 3 bottles

The entire setup and behavior of the firehouse reminded me of a Fraternity House. Awkwardly enough, it seemed to the group that most of the firemen tended to enjoy dancing with each other rather than with the women around. Whatever, it was still pretty fun... minus the drama... what drama? not my drama...