Fête Nationale

This year Fete Nationale landed on a Wednesday, which meant no lazy long weekend for us - unless we wanted to take the days off ourselves, of course. We'd spent the past several weekends staying home or in Paris, so we agreed to take a small road trip for our mid-week day off.

My French tutor Gil insisted that we had to visit the hortillonnages, a collection of floating gardens outside Amiens. Apparently you can take little boat cruises up and down the river to see the gardens. Really sounds like my parents' sort of thing, doesn't it?

Well Amiens isn't so far, so we decided to check it out. Before we left, however, we had a morning coffee on the balcony with one eye on the clouds gathering on the horizon. As we sat together in silence, I heard a distant roar. It's not unusual for us to hear trains from our balcony, but this sounded like an especially loud train.

I had just finished asking "What is that?" when Dave started to stand in alarm and look skyward as nine fighter jets buzzed overhead streaming blue and red smoke. Wow! It was the annual Fete Nationale demonstration, when military planes zoom over the Champs Elysees. Our town just happened to be in the path of their turn around tour, so we got a great view from our own balcony. They banked and turned back, then flew over again another half dozen times. They only used the smoke for the first pass, but it was really impressive nonetheless.

The rest of the day would have a hard time keeping up with the drama of the morning, but even if it rains on your day off it's still a day off, no?

The rain started when we were halfway to Amiens. We parked on the street and decided to get lunch to wait for the rain to pass. We ended up in the same restaurant as our last visit - a cozy, woody bar with an American vibe (kind of like a TGIF without the formula kitcsh) - and shamelessly ordered hamburgers and fries.

As lunch turned to espressos the rain still hadn't relented, so we gave up on the gardens and unfurled the umbrellas for a walk to the cathedral.

The Amiens cathedral is the largest in France, and we'd been there before, but last time it was winter and bitter cold. This time it was a musty refuge for camera-wielding tourists like us.

We passed some time walking around, admiring the stained glass and intricate black and white tiled floors. When we'd had our fill we took a stroll around the soggy streets of the town. Due to either the weather or the holiday the city was practically deserted, which I took full advantage of when we came across one of the few open shops - a small Galeries Lafayette. A nearly empty Galeries Lafayette during summer sales - every French girl's dream! I walked away happy with a new cardigan and t-shirt, and David claimed to have tried on every pair of sunglasses in the store while he waited.

By the time we returned to the car the rain had stopped, and as we reached Conflans the clouds had parted and the sun reappeared. How's that for luck. Well, as I said, it's better than going to work. I count the day as a win.