Day 11: la Fete Nationale

Happy Bastille Day! (or as it is known in France, "la Fete Nationale"-- which literally translates to the national party). 

I had high hopes for a big celebration from Pointe a Pitre, so I headed down town around 10/ 10:30 to try and catch the festivities.  While I expected most of the shops and restaurants to be closed (it is a national holiday after all!), I did not expect the city to be almost completely deserted! It was actually kind of eerie: imagine walking through a street in New York in broad daylight with nobody else around. Still, I headed towards Place de la Victoire, where I'd heard the parade took place.  It was also deserted.  But, being a beautiful day with a slight breeze coming off the marina, I took a seat and read for over an hour, waiting for something to happen.  A couple more people trickled out from nearby buildings, but nothing out of the ordinary or that would signal "imminent parade".  Finally, I stood and asked a couple people if there was really a parade today.  "Normally, yes." But nobody could give me information about what time it would take plac or really anything specific. 

As it was just about lunch time, I decided to head back to my apartment and see if I could dig up more information about festitivies over some food.  Still nothing! I turned on the local news to see the Tour de France rather than more local coverage.  So I found another channel that showed the parade happening in Paris.  By this time, I was very frustrated by the lack of information, so I watched some of the Parisien parade and then headed over to the beach.  Ah yes: that's where everybody went! (Parking was an absolute nightmare).  I spent the afternoon reading (almost done with my Virgnia Woolf novel) and laying out in the sun (with appropriate SPF coverage).  As you can imagine, I did not accomplish much research wise.  In my defense, however, EVERYTHING closes on holidays here, so I couldn't have done much.

After doing some more research, I discovered that a couple of other towns did indeed have 14 juillet festitivies.  I am unsure if I simply missed the parade (which seems a bit unlikely, unless they had it in the afternoon-- and all of  the scant information I found pointed to a morning parade) or if I just parked myself in the wrong spot (again unlikely, as Place de la Victoire finds itself very much at the center of Pointe a Pitre).  Either way, the people I talked to didn't seem very excited about the holiday-- a bit disappointing to me as a foreigner! No matter: tomorrow I am headed over to Sainte Anne, a nearby beach town, to check out the youth reading festival as well as some exhibits at their cultural center. (Although there is a high probability that I will hit the beach too!:).  I am determined to finally make it over to Fort Louis Delgres later this week-- it looks like either Thursday or Friday will be perfect for that!