Sanger Cruiser Travel Log: July 14, 2015 - Paris, Happy Bastille Day

We headed out to the Champs Élysée to watch the Bastille Day parade.

If you want to get a front row view you better get there early and don't bring any liquids with you. We stood outside of the barricaded area at the entrance gate and watched as people were searched and had to discard all of their liquids. There were some that had packed a lot of sodas for the day. We also watched people as they decided to leave after a while, pick up whatever it was that they had left at the gate and walk out.

We took the metro to the Franklin D. Roosevelt stop and when we popped out on top this is pretty much what it looked like and this was an hour before the parade started.

The French Military were lining the Champs and you could hear someone speaking over the speakers.

The French Cavalry came riding by.

I loved the fly over in the French Flag colors.

Then they planes just kept coming. This was the most exciting thing that happened that we saw of the parade.

The worst part that we saw was a couple of different American families. One family had scheduled an Eiffel Tower tour and couldn't get past the blocked areas to get to it. They had been walking around for an hour the mom told us, as the dad was trying to ask the police how to get there. The second family was trying to get to the airport for their flight home and couldn't find any transportation to get them there. The reason being is that they shut the metro system down in the area and with all of the blocked roads they couldn't figure out how to get somewhere to get a taxi. Even Elaine and Fred had left just after us from the apartment and they were able to jump right on their bus which got them down a ways but then when they switched buses it was 12:45 before they were able to reach close enough to the Champs Élysée.

After a little bit of watching the different military groups walk by we decided to head out

So Roger looked at the map to figure out what our best course of action would be to get out and head back to the apartment.

We found the horses on a side street.

I don't know if the checkerboard pattern on their bums is a type of brand or what but it was on all of them.

The streets were pretty quiet all along our walk home.

The security was pretty high.

We also watched as a lot of helicopters flew over.

View of the Sacré-Cauer

So what do you do with some left over KFC when you are in Paris? You make quiche.

We had seen a strawberry tart in a bakery shop window on the way home so I decided to make some strawberry pizza also.

Well we wanted to see the Bastille Day fireworks so instead of heading to the Eiffel Tower area we headed up to the Sacre-Caeur. On our way we passed this very cool cemetery.

As you can see there were many others that had decided this was a good spot also.

So we finally found a good viewing spot of the tower which is where they will be shooting off the fireworks. Which was great until the security guards came and ran us and others out as the park was closing.

So we found an other area that we could see out over Paris but we could not see the tower. This guy was amazing to watch.

Then we had the fire dancer.

The coolest thing he did was spin something like a huge sparkler. He is in the middle of all of that.

We could see fireworks that were going off in other areas but were very far away. Once we could tell that the fireworks were going off at the Tower and that we could not see them we headed back towards home.