le 14 juillet-le jour de la prise de la Bastille

Yesterday we experienced France’s national holiday, la fête de la Bastille, or le 14 juillet. I gotta say, it was kinda crazy! It was pretty quiet here throughout the day in Tours; in the morning, I watched the parade in Paris, which was unlike any parade on the 4th of July that I’ve ever seen. It was mostly a show of France’s military strength, with battalions of soldiers, arms a-swinging, and groups of tanks and other military vehicles. To be quite honest, it reminded me of some military parades we’ve seen in the Orient in the past 50 years. Really different from the U.S.

That afternoon, a bunch of us had a “pique-nique” at the Tours Botanical Gardens, which were really interesting. It was a mix between the gardens we saw in Paris and a zoo, as we saw flamingoes, a bear, wallabies, and peacocks. That night though, we all met up and went down to the Loire River for the firework show at 23h00 (11 pm). That was when the craziness began, because it was as if the whole city of Tours was there. On top of that, there were random spurts of mini-fireworks everywhere we walked, especially with all the little kids, and not just the little noisemakers, but actual big-bang fireworks. I can’t tell you the number of times we saw someone almost get hit by one on the curb; it took us about a dozen times to get used to them and stop jumping out of our skin as they went off unawares behind us. The real fireworks were decent, but nothing like the 4th of July—I think our desire to blow stuff up really lends itself to our firework shows, hahaha!