Bastille Day

We walked around quite a bit on the evening of Bastille Day.  Our street, Avenue de la Bourdonnais, was absolutely overflowing with people walking to the Champ de Mars (the park with a view of the Eiffel Tower), so we tried to walk on some of the back streets in our area.

The fireworks did not begin until 11 pm, and since we thought we would have a pretty good view from our apartment window, we planned to be back at our apartment by then.

While many stores and restaurants were closed for the holiday, those that were open did huge business.  I tried to pop into a grocery store, but the line just to get into the store was too long, let alone the queue to check out.  We thought it might be a problem getting a seat at a restaurant, but we were able to just walk in and sit down at a bustling corner brasserie La Terrasse.  By the time we got there, Gina was hot.  So she just ordered a mozzarella tomato salad.  I had a steak frites. The food was ok, and I'm guessing it might have been better on a less chaotic day.

After dinner we walked around to get a sense of the atmosphere.  We explored a very nice street in the 15th Arrondissement, it looked to have a lot of fun and bustling bistros and brasseries.

And here is what we saw from our window: