Bastille Day firemen's ball in Paris
 

You may wonder how I can already have a report on the Fête Nationale already. That's because most of the firemen's balls were held on the evening of the 13th due to the holiday falling in the middle of the week.

For those who missed it, I invite you to attend: http://tinyurl.com/3345kxv

Hmmm... I <b>already</b> have an excess of alreadys....

Thank you. Was supposed to be in Paris today celebrating my 50th birthday. Work schedules forced the postponement of the trip until August. With your photos and the videos I can at least pretend that I was there...bonne fête.

"...most of the firemen's balls were held on the evening of the 13th..."

In the timeless words of AC/DC's Bon Scott:
"Some balls are held for charity,
and some for fancy dress,
but when they're held for pleasure,
they're the balls that I like best...!"

The fire station I visited burned during the night. I was not involved!

In the words of Homer Simpson, "Doh!"

How horribly ironic. Thanks for the pictorial anyway, kerouac. Those poor pompiers!

What I thought was strange was that there were maybe 500 firemen's balls all over France last night, and I happened to go to the only one that had a problem.

Great pics, kerouac, my son is a big fan of firemen and when we were in Paris last year, we ran into a group of them and they were wonderful to my son, took pictures, etc., showed him around, great adventure for him. Thanks for the great tour, but sorry "your" firehouse burned down.

I returned to the same fire station last night. Here is the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy5rOLdn4EE

There are still about six fire stations in Paris having another ball tonight even though people have to work tomorrow. They run from 21:00 to 04:00.

And do people really stay up that late?

I have no first hand experience but clearly they do, or the balls would no go on that long.

The thing that amazed me last night was that we stayed only about 2 hours, and the band had never taken a break in all that time.

Thanks for taking us along, kerouac!