Right in the middle between the Independence Day of the U, S & A and our own Swiss National Holiday I’ll give you a short summary of my 4th of July experience. As I was working starting in the afternoon until late in the evening there will be two parts: Pre- and past-work.
Pre-Work
On the way to the office I noticed some ads on the side of the street that announced the Independence Day fireworks. The website of this firework also mentioned that there will be the largest Independence Day parade of Northern California here in Redwood City in the morning. Perfect, I had found something to do in the morning. Together with my unfortunate peers that shared the work duties that day we went to see this parade
Parade
As expected, you don’t get to be the biggest parade and consist only of perfect parade participants. There were well-thought-through displays and others like a bike club (with bicycles) that did not ride its bikes. They mounted one bicycle on top of a pickup and positioned themselves around it and drove along the street. Compared to other groups that danced all the way quite well coordinated the bike club was very lazy. But on the other hand they possibly presented the American way of Life the best =) But see for yourself in the selection of pictures below:
Festivities
Around 12:00 PM (looks stupid but that is supposed to be noon???) the parade was over and we went to watch and observe the other festivities. The whole town centre was closed off for car traffic. More or less professional artists were painting in different places. The most professional looking “paintings” were being drawn in front of a building that looks like a city hall. In actuality, it is a history museum and the city hall is more modern some blocks away.
Anyway, there were also other things being shown to anybody interested enough to watch. Another street was full of food stands and one street was filled with fancy cars – old and new ones. A Stanford Band was scheduled to play at 1 PM and I expected an impressive display as Stanford is one of the top universities in the world. Instead, I watched some kind of Gugge-Musigg that was not even that good. So sad! =)
Past-Work
Technically, it was not yet after work for me. But as the work load was quite low all but one were able to go and see the fireworks. As you can see from the pictures below we were not that near to where the fireworks went off. Nevertheless, still a worthy conclusion of my first Independence Day celebration.
