I set off early, as I knew the crowds would be huge. Came to a stop just before the Louvre and the Metro wasn't going to stop at any other stations near the parade route. So it was quite a long walk from there.
What stupid schmuck would leave their car on the main route on this day? Deserves to get towed away, I say. So all the streets nearby were shut down, very heavy police and military presence, and frankly, I thought they seemed quite jittery.
The route was not direct. We went through the Tuileries and crossed the Seine (ie, away from the parade route!). Caption for the photo above is, "I'm following them!"
This shot shows the Pont de la Concorde and I made a decision to stop just before this bridge on the d'Orsay side. The crowd was huge by this stage, and the hapless hopefuls who carried on had to go further down to another bridge to head toward the Champs Elysees - and I reckoned they would not have got near it. Where I was, I knew I would see the fly-past - and I was dead right.
It was a perfect spot to see the aircraft. It was amusing, like they had bought everything out of the hangar. So there were lots of whizzy jet fighters, but also every transport and utility plane they had.
My position was confirmed as I was surrounded by English aviation geeks who knew every aircraft type and model on display. It was funny, really. I spoke to them about the restoration scene in New Zealand, and promoted the Classic Fighters show and Wanaka.
Afterwards, I wanted to kill time to let the crowds disperse, so had lunch back across the river, and then went for a Ferris wheel ride.
Great views, first time on this don't know why I haven't done it before.
On the way home...
And that evening, I have a cruise on the Seine with dinner and fireworks. As mentioned earlier, the Maxim's boat cancelled, so I was offered a substitute, still with window seat. And it wasn't half bad, the redeeming feature being an open deck at the back where we watched the fireworks. But compared to some of the other boats around, this did seem like a tub bought out of retirement for the occasion.
I promise, there will be fireworks before I'm done with this.