Place de la Bastille and Manifestation

Day 9: 5/26/2013

This morning I woke and went for a run.  It had to have been one of the prettiest runs I’ve been on. I also got a little lost, but was able to make it back okay. After showering and cleaning up I went to the grocery store and got a few items. It was really fun and made me feel even more Parisian. After that I went back and read and napped for a bit. I feel like I’ve adjusted quite well, but we’ll see how I am feeling once I start working my 9.5 hour work days! Ugh!

Later I met up with my friends at Place de la Bastille. I really wanted to see place de la bastille because of all the history that had occurred there (storming of the bastille, basically the French revolution). I also learned quite a bit about this Place in one of my classes and wanted to see the modern opera house called Opera Bastille. After looking around and taking a few pictures, we walked around. It was finally a nice day and it was very enjoyable to just walk around and take in Paris and all of its beauty. However, we got a little bored after a while so we decided to go to a Bar and have some drinks. The bar was called L’academie de Bierre (The beer academy) and it was in the area of Montparnasse. After finishing our drinks we went to look for a restaurant. We ended up eating at a restaurant called Hippopotamus. It was a very modern restaurant with a lot of unique dinner options. It was very trendy and good!

When choosing what we wanted to do, we had to be very careful because there was a giant protest going on. It was called the manifestation. Basically people were protesting because they were upset with the president and the government because they passed a law that allows gay marriage. The president didn’t really take into consideration other peoples opinion, which is what angers the French. There were about 30,000 people protesting in Paris in popular areas such as Champs Elysees. The ending place of the protest was at les invalids. Jon, our advisor and my host mom warned us to stay away because in the past these protests have been very dangerous and violent. When we took the metro, there were several stops that were closed because of the protest. We also saw several people with rolled up flags and such that were heading home from the protest. It was very interesting to see, and to learn about this topic. From what I understood the French view gay relationships as an unspoken topic. It’s not necessarily prohibited, but it’s definitely not accepted. The French act as if it does not exist.