Bastille Day
And no, not the highly-acclaimed band, Bastille.

After our nine hour bus ride, which included a short one and a half hour intermission on a ferry across the English Channel, Yael, Rachel, Brianna, Sophie, and I had made it to Paris!!! The first mission of the trip was to go to the Bastille Day parade, which, unbeknownst to us, you had to arrive at 6 AM to even see properly. We also had all our luggage with us, so getting into the parade was a bit of a struggle. One of us had a suitcase, and when we tried to take it into the parade, security did not let us through. We had to find a way to stow the suitcase somewhere while we watched the parade, so we found a nice woman at a hotel nearby who was kind enough to keep it for us. When we got to the parade, well… We didn’t see much. However, we did see the French Air Force fly over us, which was très cool. That is all the French I will speak for the remainder of these journal entries haha.

After the parade, we walked to our Airbnb. Checking into the Airbnb was a bit of a struggle considering none of us spoke French, and the woman checking us in spoke two languages: Spanish and French. Luckily, Sophie spoke Spanish and was able to sort out the details of our check-in. Our Airbnb was absolutely perfect. It was less than 10 minutes away from the Eiffel Tower, and we all slept pretty comfortably on the two couches and one bed. Not to mention how cheap it was — only $50 for the whole trip! I was pretty happy with Yael’s frugal find. After a loooooong cat nap at the Airbnb, we were off to find food and a place to sit to watch the Bastille Day fireworks.
The food part was pretty easy. Crepes everywhere! I ordered a jambon et fromage crepe and I was a very happy lady. After that we walked and found a place to watch the fireworks. Then, we realized it was only 6:00 PM and we had another four and a half hours before the fireworks even started. Our friend Dwaine and his crew from the Oxford trip were also in Paris for Bastille Day, so we decided to meet up and sit with him. My GPS app told us that we were only an hour’s walk away from where they were sitting, so we decided to make our way there. But ohhhhh how that app lied to us.
Most of the bridges around the Eiffel Tower were closed off from public use, so there was no way in hell that we were going to make it to Dwaine in an hour. By the time we found a bridge to cross, we were hungry again. We found a little bakery on the other side of the Seine that gave us some free pastries(!!!) and we continued to make our way to Dwaine. My GPS app was pretty useless at this point because it didn’t have a clue what streets were closed off. We had to use pure intuition and street smarts to get around. The lazy girl inside me was sure missing the convenience of phone navigation.
Eventually we found our way to Dwaine and the crew, and our fireworks-watching spot was perfect. It was little out of the way of our Airbnb, but that was okay considering the view was just perfect. I added a video but it doesn’t quite convey how wonderful it was. Guess I have my memories!
