July 14 – Paris and Bastille Day

We had to get up in the middle of the night to get a very early taxi to the airport for our flight to Paris.  The flight to Paris was only a couple hours. 

This is Bastille Day (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille [a prison] and the start of the French revolution).  Unfortunately, by the time our transfer had us into Paris proper the big parade had broken up and traffic was a mess.  There were many closed roads and our poor driver kept running into dead ends.  She eventually was able to get us to within about 400 meters of our hotel where we got out and walked the rest of the way with our luggage.

We did see some costumed horsemen who looked like they were headed back to the stables after the parade.

We also saw a few military fly overs…but they were too quick so we didn’t get any photos of them.

We are only a half a block from the Rue de Rivoli, a main street that parallels the Seine River.  We walked down there later in the day for dinner. 

Liam had fun trying out all the various music boxes but didn’t end up buying anything.  

We had thought about going down to the Trocadero late to watch the Bastille Day fireworks but they didn’t start until 11:00 pm and that was pretty late for us.  So we skipped it and went to bed not long after dinner.