Bastille Day!

It's a strange, surreal thing to hear accordion music in France, outside of the Paris Metro. The whole point of tourism, I think, is to understand how similar a place is to your home, and how maybe it really isn't as beautiful as the pictures in the calendar, and that maybe the people there really are just as snooty as you thought (actually, the French aren't that bad, but this one German guy is simply implacable). In the midst of my Bastille-induced pondering upon our shared humanity -- the celebrations so similar to 4th of July fireworks, parties, and the chaotic scamperings of sugar-mad children -- that maybe you can understand why, when the band, this band in fact:
started up a 17-minute instrumental accordion piece, I was disturbed. It was the "In a Gadda da Vida" of cigarette-smoking obnoxious-mime-comedy French travesty. I turned to the French mathematicians from the conference and before I could even ask, one of them read my quizzical look and said, "No. I think they do this for the tourists and the old people."

The band later redeemed themselves by playing some swing and jive, and then later damned themselves by handing the mic to the drummer. The cathedral was beautifully lit though, (it's adjacent to the performance square in the previous picture)
Oh, and did you know that cameras can take pictures of fireworks?

It just kills your battery and 9 times out of 10 it doesn't turn out. But, totally worth it, right?