I let the boys sleep in this morning (Saturday) until 11'ish but after a nice lunch we headed out for a walk ... a very long walk that ended up being over 16 kilometres by the time we got home ... first stop though was the LGBT Pride Parade. A bit outrageous as expected as these kinds of things tend to be since they deliberately use a bit of a 'shock factor' to make their point but all things considered a lot of good clean fun. Both Christopher and Karolis didn't know what to make of most if it but they sure did enjoy it. Neither do much talking while we are out walking and site seeing but at dinner the Parade was all they could talk about so it obviously was a big hit with them.
Paris LGBT Pride has become one of the city's most coveted festivals each June with this one bringing an estimated one million people into street to watch and participate. I say participate because it is more of a street party than a parade. For the first fifteen minutes or so we didn't even realize that there were actually floats and people marching. It was wild.
The Parade ( Marche des Fiertes in French ) is an opportunity for LGBT organizations to draw attention to key issues affecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals such as rights to marriage and adoption. Canada has dealt with many of these issues for quite some time but many countries especially in Europe are still quite discriminatory so there is a real purpose to this event over and above the entertainment value.
The parade starts at Montparnasse Bienvenue which is only about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. It works its way through the city along Boulevard du Montparnasse, Boulevard St-Michel, Boulevard St-Germain, crossing the Seine at the Pont de Sully and finishing at Place de la Bastille the site of the original jail in Paris and the epicentre of the french revolution. It lasted about 4 hours and we walked a lot of it and I'll tell you it was a long walk. There would have been some tired LGBT's last night since most of them were dancing up a storm and singing and chanting the entire distance.
As you can see some of the outfits were a bit over the top but HEY they were just having a lot of fun ... more power to them and can you imagine how much tourist money they brought into the city?
Life if good ... enjoy
Auto Guru in Europe
So I'm surprised at the "repressive" attitude in France/Europe since I first saw openly gay couples in Denmark in the late '70s and assumed Canada was way behind in acceptance ... mind you, at the time I was coming from provincial London, Ont. not West Coast Vancouver!
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