July 14 is Bastille Day in France, which is a holiday in France that celebrates the beginning of the French revolution. Clearly, the goal of the revolution was to become more like the Americans by overthrowing their king. This cultural export of "American" continues today as you can see in this perfect replica of the Starsky and Hutch car I saw the other day while walking the dog.
For the diehard fans, here is the link to the number 1 fan site in England: (the English all secretly want to be American also but would never admit it)
www.starskyandhutchonline.com
Here is a link to a brief explanation of Bastille Day:
Bastille Day
As everyone knows (except everyone in Batesville who was trying to get ahold of me and others on Monday) Bastille Day is a government holiday making it a 3 day weekend which allowed me to go to the 2008 old boat show in Brest. My friend in marketing has a beach house there so he let me sleep in his yard and sail his boat in the bay. I also attended his family picnic on Saturday. There were 43 people there of all ages. More than last year, but fewer than the year before. That was a record year of 68. The way they do it is fun, because he just tells the whole family on his mom's side and his dad's side the date and they just see who shows up. It is a picnic, so they prepare nothing and ask for no responses. It was just like any other family reunion but in French. Just as with everything else, it was totally different but exactly the same at the same time. Oh, there was a lot more wine and a lot less beer than an American get together. The bottle his dad brought costs $300 now in the US, but his dad bought it in '87 for approximately $7.
Anyway, went to the boat show. Here is the official site:
Check it out, it is in English.
www.brest2008.fr/en/
As everyone knows (except everyone in Batesville who was trying to get ahold of me and others on Monday) Bastille Day is a government holiday making it a 3 day weekend which allowed me to go to the 2008 old boat show in Brest. My friend in marketing has a beach house there so he let me sleep in his yard and sail his boat in the bay. I also attended his family picnic on Saturday. There were 43 people there of all ages. More than last year, but fewer than the year before. That was a record year of 68. The way they do it is fun, because he just tells the whole family on his mom's side and his dad's side the date and they just see who shows up. It is a picnic, so they prepare nothing and ask for no responses. It was just like any other family reunion but in French. Just as with everything else, it was totally different but exactly the same at the same time. Oh, there was a lot more wine and a lot less beer than an American get together. The bottle his dad brought costs $300 now in the US, but his dad bought it in '87 for approximately $7.
Anyway, went to the boat show. Here is the official site:
Check it out, it is in English.
www.brest2008.fr/en/
I did not think to take pictures of Remy's house, so please go to his website and see it. He has a web site because he also leases it out to vacationers.
www.gite-marin-breton.com
Here are my pictures of the beach outside of Remy's house:
Here are my pictures of the Brest show:
One small section of the show.
Several hundred boats on the water of the 2000 boats at the show.
Don't know why there was a dragon there. But it was cool.
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