Party at the Bastille 2

OK. Forget that last post we did about the party at the Bastille. That was nothing. Nothing.

Last night, France bet Spain 3-1 in the football world cup to advance to the quarter finals. France has been playing really, really badly lately and it was a minor miracle that they even made it to the top 16. Nobody really thought that they had a chance of beating Spain, and even the most die-hard supporters were predicting a hard-fought 1-0 win in extra time. So, the 3-1 victory (including a last minute goal by national hero Zinadine Zidane) came as a bit of a shock.

After picking our jaws up off the floor at full time, we decided to head down to the Place de la Bastille to see how the rest of Paris was taking the news. We were greeted by a cacophony of car and scooter horns as pretty much everyone with a vehicle took to the streets purely to express their elation by tooting their horns as much and as loudly as possible. The best effort was the guy with a moped who was circling the Place de la Bastille tooting his horn while a poodle perched in the basket on the front of the bike barked at everyone. The remainder of the population took to the streets on foot to shout, sing and wave their flags. Before long, the middle of the roundabout was full of people and the traffic was down to one lane, mainly comprised of people hanging out of car windows and sunroofs waving flags and cheering.

There was no real focus to the celebrations: it was just an uninhibited expression of pure joy from thousands of people. Quite an amazing experience, and something that we will probably never see again!