...................Tina is in Europe!...................: It's a Boat! It's a Plane!

"Centenaire de l'aéronautique navale:
Du grand spectacle à Hyères"

Me kickin' it with the French Marines. I just had to get a pic to capture their traditional uniform. I can't imagine US marines wearing a shirt like that, not to mention the pom-pom hat. But hey, I got to touch a pom-pom and apparently that brings good luck! Well that's what they say, anyway...

Tens of thousands of people came out last Sunday to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the "existence of aeronautical shipbuilding." And I was one of them!

Now I'm no expert on big boats and fancy planes, but this "meeting" was a huge event!
As I understand it, the naval base in my town was one of the first main places, in 1910, to really go gung-ho on, shall we say, encouraging the bond b/w ships & aircraft. Hence the giant party in my town!

Here's a very big ship, I think the USS Normandy, and a little police boat to come chase people away so they don't get too close

I met up with Raymond, Christine, and some of their friends/relatives and first we went out on their sailboat to take a look at the battleships that were just a ways off shore!

There were 8 giant ships on the water, from a mix of countries, including the US! It was so cool to see our flag flying (next to the French one, since the ships were in French waters). Not to mention, the BIGGEST, COOLEST ship with the most planes on it was from the US :) And yes, we had a cultural singing time on the sailboat, which included my stunning rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, followed by both the Thai and French national anthems (not performed by me, thank goodness).

If you know more about big ships than I do, here are the names of the boats that were there:

nuclear aircraft carriers "Charles de Gaulle" (France) & "USS Harry S. Truman" (USA)
auxiliary aircraft carrier "RFA Argus" (Great Britain)
aircraft carrier "Principe de Asturias" (Spain)
missile-launching destroyer "USS Normandy" (USA)
a big boat with a landing strip for the planes, "Foudre" (France) (ok, so it's getting tricky trying to translate the names of the types of boats)
some missile-launching warships "Forbin" and "Hessen" (Germany)

See the helicopters?

After our tour by sea, we found our way to dry land and toured around a ton of different planes and helicopters that were all parked on the naval base. There were 110 aircraft!!!

Here's one of the helicopters on land!

They even allowed the public to go inside some of the planes/helicopters to see what it was like inside! It was really cool getting to talk to the crews responsible for the planes...I even found the AMERICANS! It may sound ridiculous, but Americans are few and far between over here, and casually talking to them in English made me so excited to come home! haha

This is Casey, from Dallas. I also met some guys from LA and NY. It's funny how it feels like a big deal to meet people from the US -- it feels like, "oh gosh! people that understand where I'm coming from!" (even if they don't.) It's just a change from trying to explain to French people the differences b/w here and the US.

I got a 5-euro* badge commemorating the "Rawhides" 50th year anniversary as a VAW/VRC squadron.

More info on the Rawhides here: http://vaw-vrcreadyroom.org/50th-anniversary-of-vrc-40/

*free for me! cuz I'm just that special... ;)

AND then there was a big flight demonstration of tons of the different planes, including a show similar to the Blue Angels show that flies in Seattle each year over Labor Day, only French style :)