After dinner some of us tried to see the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower without walking all the way to Trocadero, which is crowded and in the past has been full of aggressive teenagers from Paris suburbs throwing cherry bombs in front of the completely unmoved police. Well, we missed the first half of the fireworks, and the symphony, and the light show commemorating World War I; it really was too bad. But even just seeing the top half of the Eiffel Tower and hearing the echoes boom around us was pretty impressive. A small crowd had gathered at the top of a street leading toward the Eiffel Tower to watch. I heard a little boy say, "Même pas peur!" (I'm not scared at all!) The full moon rose rapidly right behind the tower, as if it had been programmed in...and maybe it had!
When it was all over, the tower just sparkled, for a long time, as the clouds of gunpowder turned the moon red.
