Bastille Day

So, I have wanted to go to Bastille Day in France ever since we got here. But, it just never worked out. Mostly, I just never knew when it was actually Bastille Day. It's not like they have Bastille Day sales in Germany to remind me what day it is. (I know Bastille Day is the 14th of July, but I never know the current day, that's what I mean)

So, I found out all of the Bastille Day activities taking place in Strasbourg, or go-to city in France. Only a couple of hours away, nice and simple. It would have been cool to see it in Paris, but it wasn't worth the drive. In Strasbourg, there was to be a water show and cathedral lighting (though those are every Friday and Saturday in the summer), and special Bastille Day fireworks and public dancing.

So, everything was late at night, because that's when it's dark, and you can see fireworks. Since the fireworks didn't even start until 10:30, though, we decided to stay the night. I found a little hotel about 20 minutes out of town. The ones in our price range actually in Strasbourg got horrible ratings. This one was only 20 minutes away and got great ones. So, we went there. We stopped at the hotel first. There was one woman who spoke English. The room was great. We hung out for a bit and then went downstairs for some dinner. The food was pretty good. Soon after that, it was time to head to town.

We had a little bit of adventure parking, since a lot of the roads were closed, and there were a butt ton of people there. We ended up sitting in line for the parking structure we originally picked. Every time somebody came out, the attendant would let a car in. Luckily, there were only two people ahead of us, and people were pretty regularly leaving the structure. So, we waited maybe 15 minutes. It was better than trying to find another parking structure with all of the closed streets, though.

The fireworks were pretty near the water show. I figured if we sat at the water show, we'd be able to see the fireworks, too. So, that's what we did. We sat along the river with a billion other people. We danced a bit along the way.

Dancing in the street

At 10:30, there was no sign of a water show, but we did see the fireworks! It was the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen, and made up for us not having seen any 4th of July fireworks. Our view was partially blocked by some buildings on a corner, but we could see most of them. Way cool. At one point, there were fireworks that shot out of the sky and fell into the water. Then, they fell into the crowd. Oops!

Some of them made the buildings look like they were on fire

These were cool. They hung around for a long time and made the whole sky sparkle

Sparkle curtains

The crowd afterwards

Emma says - Fireworks! Oh, it was the best fireworks show I've ever seen! And we were so close to them that the sparks were falling in the water, and then on people by us. It was better than the ones we could have seen on base for the 4th.