As I mentioned, when we booked our trip to Provence, it didn’t occur to us that it was the Bastille Day holiday weekend.    Bastille Day is known as La Fête Nationale.  The equivalent would be our 4th of July Independence Day.

I am sure Paris it must have been nuts, but it ended up being a nice time to visit Provence and the countryside for us.   It’s always fun to see how another culture celebrates.

As we mentioned yesterday on the blog, we witnessed lively music & the running of the bull (singular) in the town square on Friday night, the eve of the holiday.   Saturday night, we had heard there would be fireworks for le quatorze.  Since we missed them living in Geneva for the 4th of July, we looked forward to celebrating with the French for their Independence.

For the evening of le quatorze juillet, we strolled around town a little bit and then had a divine dinner at La Maison Jaune.

St. Rémy in the early evening

Our table on the terrace at La Maison Jaune.  We could hear the music in the square that prefaced the fireworks. 

We concluded dinner with perfect timing at 10:00pm, the time the fireworks were due to start.   We had a general concept of where to walk to view them display, but ended up bumping into a walking parade so we just joined in.  We figured it would be simple enough to find them that way!

Everyone was dressed in their red, white and blue.   The children were dressed adorably, proudly holding their paper lanterns.   Paper lanterns are quite commonly carried for European holidays.  We saw our first last year on la premiere aout, Switzerland’s Independence Day.

We strolled along with the crowd, enjoying watching the celebrations:

When we reached the stadium / park, it was just in time for the commencement of the feu d’artifice (fireworks in French).   We found a nice spot on the edge of the sidewalk and enjoyed.   The show blasted in conjunction with Whitney Houston music, which we found to be a very entertaining addition.     All in all, it was a very nice fireworks show.   Not as big as Geneva’s hour long Fête de Genève production, but a very nice showing for a small town such as Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Fireworks for Bastille Day

This is now the third “Independence Day” we have seen!!   We are grateful for the experience to have witnessed it.

A belated Joyeux Bastille Day to all our French readers !