In the morning, I headed over to a Carrefour to scare up some breakfast and supplies for a picnic then waited to hear from my friend. I turned on the TV a little after 10 am to catch the military parade, and as I watched, I saw how much better it is to watch on TV. I really don’t understand why France does it every year. It is certainly a waste of money and fuel to organize, but I guess it makes them feel better to show off all the new military tech, which included jet packs, drones, and I swear the television feed was using facial recognition technology to pull up bios of the marching soldiers.
We were to picnic in a forest park to the west of town, and I decided to try out the “RER” commuter train line, which are seamlessly integrated with the metro but supposedly much faster. It turned out to be much slower, as I waited 15 minutes for a train that was cancelled (and learned I don’t know the French word for cancelled), then another 15 minutes for a different train. It was okay though, and the timing was fine. We walked, we sat, we walked more. It was unfortunate that the sky was a little too cloudy and the weather on the chilly side.
Many hours later, the sun had finally chased away the clouds and we headed over to the Arc de Triumph and strolled down the Champs Elysee, which was crowded with revelers and police in riot gear. It was quite a street party, but there was an uneasiness to the vibe and some of the crowds loudly expressed their belief in liberte by jeering the police.
We attempted to get back to my friend’s apartment to feed the dog by cutting through the Champ de Mars, but found out that was impossible as dogs were banned due to the impending concert. This was unfortunately after queueing 20 minutes to get through the security checkpoint and forfeiting a half full bottle of wine. It was a long way around the anti-dog security zone and every entrance had hundreds of people queued to get into the park. Many people, especially those who wanted to drink alcohol, simply chose to sit outside the park with bridges being an especially popular spot to watch the fireworks from. The fireworks wouldn’t even begin for a couple of hours.
I was so tired after all the walking around, that I didn’t even want to head back that way to watch the fireworks. Honestly, I was mostly fed up with the crowds, and caught the metro home as the fireworks show was starting up.