July 14th, 1998 (Part 2)
| Our next stop was Notre Dame. On the way there we had to get on an RER that was jam packed. Jonathon and I almost didn't make it in time, but Elsie held the doors open and saved the day. When Jonathon and I were starting to try squeezing ourselves on to the train, the doors started to clothes. We both kind of paused before proceeding, fearing that we might become the victims of crushing doors. Elsie was forcing the door open with all of her might. She was quite adamant that we continue getting on. After we got on, a drunk French guy got mad at this little kid and sure looked like he was going to beat the kid up. I guess he hadn't heard the good news about the World Cup. |
| We got to Notre Dame and it had a bunch of scaffolding on the front. |
 |
 | It was quite grand inside. We heard a preist give a blessing and someone play the pipe organ. We walked around to the other side. |
| There was a group of kids playing instruments and dancing for money. One thing you see here are a lot of beggars and buskers. We started getting hungry so we looked for a place to eat close by. Before we ate, we dropped by a little shop on the street. Jen and I picked up an oil painting of the Arc de Triumphe with the Eiffel Tower in the background. We really liked it a lot. |
 |
 | We had dinner at a small café on the same street as the Notre Dame. I had Beef Borginion. It was very good. By now I have learned how to ask for the bill in French. "L'attention see vu plai." The waiters are very impressed or amused. I'm not sure which. |
 Seine River Cruise Ticket |
 |
 | We were then ready to try a river cruise on the Seine River. We got there at about 5 minutes till 9:00PM and were able to get right in for the 9:00PM cruise. Everyone is starting to line the streets for the fireworks display that will be later that night. There are food vendors all over the place. |
| The cruise was just great. The view from the river is wonderful. |
 |
 | The sun was setting during this time as well. Adding to the effect. One thing that didn't add to the effect quite as well was a group of obnoxious girls on the boat that screamed and waved at anything that moved, trying to get a return wave. |
| After the cruise, we decided to find a good spot to watch the fireworks. We found a place right by where we got off the boat. We thought the bright lights from the boats would ruin our enjoyment of the fireworks. That was the least of our problems. The whole time we waited, a lot of the crowd had bought their own fireworks and/or firecrackers. A lot of the kids thought it was fun to throw firecrackers into crowds of people. We almost got popped a few times. After we had waited for 2 hours it appeared the fireworks had started. I had the video camera at my ready and Jonathon was the only one who had film left in his camera to take pictures of the fireworks. My battery was running down, so I wanted to wait until the fireworks were really blasting before I turned on the camera. After about 20 seconds of fireworks, they stopped. Meanwhile, one of the errant firecrackers started a fire in an underground area very close to where we were. You couldn't see the fire from where we were because there was a metal grate over the area and it was enclosed by a short wall but you could tell by all of the smoke that it was getting worse. There were people there that had cellphones and looked like they were notifying the proper authorities of this condition. |
 | After about 20 minutes the fireworks started again. Jonathon and I weren't going to get duped 2 times in a row, so we started taking pictures and capturing the moment as soon as they started. Sure enough, about 30 seconds later they stopped again. This is kind of an odd tradition. |
| We figured that we were having just about enough of this and were contemplating on whether we should start heading back so that we could beat the big rush home. The metros were shut down for the momentous occasion, so we were going to have to walk all the way back. As we were trying to decide what we should do, our decision was made for us. The police came and cleared the area where the fire was. That meant we were out of there. We had waited there 2 hours so that we could see a minutes worth of fireworks and a burning underground area. We ended up getting the worst of both ends. After about 10 minutes of walking the real fireworks show started. Now, we were in no position to watch it. The other bad part, is that by the time they had finished, we were only about half way home. So we got to enjoy the mass pandemonium they call French traffic. It doesn't appear that there is much assistance by the police in big events like this, to keep things orderly. People were running red lights. The cars park all over the sidewalks, leaving little room to scurry home. A driver that was parked on the sidewalk decided he wanted to head his car toward the building instead of into the street and he almost pinned me against the wall with his car. He and his friends laughed at me when I hastily got out of way so I could spare my life. As we were crossing one of the roads, a car on the road decided to go in reverse right when we were behind it. Jonathon fell down and cut himself on a broken bottle on the sidewalk. Luckily, he only had minor cuts. There was also a group of many cars that were just backing up quickly on to a very busy main road. People would swerve to avoid them. One guy backed up for about 200 yards on this busy road so that he could get to the intersection that he wanted to turn off on. It was crazy. I was not a happy camper by the time I got home. We got to bed at 1:00AM. That would definitely be the latest that we got to bed on this trip. |
 |
 |
 |