Bastille Day in New York City

Fortunately or unfortunately, I seem to know a lot of French people here in New York. And the thing with the French is they celebrate this sort of Independence Day (independence, uprising, whatever) but they actually have good food (I'll always go for Merguez over hot dogs I'm afraid), lots of wine and pétanque. So I have to say, I prefer it to July 4th. Sorry.

Our Bastille Day weekend began with a sublime evening on our friend Francoise's roof in TriBeCa. We had a lovely summer evening listening to French music (including a few tracks from our beloved Stefan), eating fantastic food and drinking beaucoup de French wine. How can that ever be bad? The views are incredible from there – the Worth building, all of downtown and my favorite, the Woolworth building. The roofdeck has also been redone very well, complete with a herb garden, cloudy puffs of bamboo and towering birch trees.

We awoke in the morning to go and meet some friends a few steps away from DUMBO for more Bastille celebrations. The whole street had been cordoned off and turned into a sandy Pétanque pitch. We started our celebrations off at Provence en Boîte, which was swarming with people and we ate crèpes, frites and drank some white bordeaux and beer. After this we only made it a few blocks before turning into the very fun Bar Tabac, which I have to say was far better. So we ordered several Lillets, some Ricards, more frites and threw in some fromage and moules, just to be sure. Smith Street was heaving but was tons of fun – plenty of live music, grilling, drinking...there was even a guillotine in there. I'll certainly be back next year. That's if I'm not in France of course...