Bastille Day Parade

I love a good parade. Today as its Bastille Day there was a masssive military parade and fly past down the Champs Elysee. I got there before 9, the stated start time, and found a spot. It was almost half ten before the parade actually started due to Military Inspections taking place first. I'm pretty sure I saw the President too. The french one, not Barack Obama, although that would have been awesome. First in the parade was all the army, navy, fire brigade, police etc on foot. They were followed by police on motorbikes, armoured vehicles of all sizes with different amount of people sticking out the top and finally the fire engines which received the most amount of applause of every thing. You wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of the French army after seeing some of the firepower they've got.

After the parade finished I headed down Champs Elysee as far as I could towards the Louvre. About half way down,  the police were stopping people and sending them round. I followed the crowds of people and ended up on a road parallel to the Jardin des Tuileries at the end of which the Louvre is located. I walked to the first road I wanted to turn down only to find it blocked off by the Police. Same with the second road and the third and every road I came across. I had stopped twice to ask policemen how to get to the Louvre but all had directed me to roads that were blocked off. I was getting really fed up. It was so hot, I'd been standing up for hours and I needed the loo. After a while I reached a road blocked off by tape but which had no police maintaining the blockade. I copied the tens of other people trying to go in the same direction, ducked under the tape and within 5 mins was at the Louvre.

When I got there, the queue was insane. It went entirely round one side of the courtyard of the Loivre and through an archway and round the corner. A sign said it was a two hour wait. Great. I joined the queue anyway. If it was taking too long I'd just come back tomorrow. However the queue was moving pretty fast and it probably didn't even take an hour.