La Nuit de Feu

Last night we went to La Nuit de Feu, or "Night of Fire", in Chantilly. Doesn't that sound dramatic?

In fact, neither of us had a clue what a Night of Fire was as we boarded our C2 and programmed the Tom Tom to take us to Chantilly last night. I've learned that some of life's greatest events are complete surprises, so I made a conscious effort to not do any research in advance.

A few months ago a colleague asked me if I was interested in going to the Nuit de Feu, and when I said I didn't know what it was, he proceeded to explain it to me in French. The only word I got out of it was feux d'artifice, or fireworks. Well shoot, who doesn't like fireworks?

So last night we rolled into Chantilly, home of a famous château and a glamorous horse stable. We had never been there before, and were delighted with the wooded drive leading up to the grounds. We parked the car in a large field and proceeded toward the center of the events, a large park surrounded by grandstands.

We got there a bit late - only 30 minute before the opening of events - and found that the park was completely packed. The only place we could find to put our little blanket was on a miserable plot of dirt and rocks. The sheer number of people left David reeling, and he talked me into leaving the park for the grassy grounds beyond. I agreed-with a certain amount of grumbling-and we exited the park, our tickets gone to waste.

We hiked outside the park for a while until David found us a grassy bank opposite the château, where other non-ticketed spectators huddled against the cold. We sat and waited for a while, and finally the show began.

It turns out that the Night of Fire is a frenzy of laser lights and fireworks, all to the tune of classical music. It was quite spectacular, although our vision was a bit restricted outside the park. However, if we hadn't moved, we wouldn't have gotten the beautiful photos with the château in the foreground. And we would have been in a fit of bad traffic on the way home.

We were really excited to see how well our photos turned out, but there were a lot of fuzzy ones. We're starting to think it's time to invest in a tripod.

Of course, more of the same on flickr.