Quatorze Juillet and the defilé - in Lille!

We planned our trip to France in the weekend of Quatorze Juillet. 

We'd been there once before - in Paris! - where we saw the famous defilé on the Champs Elysee.
It was very impressive although for me, on the pacifist side of the spectrum, a bit too much with the proud presenting of all the war equipment. Those anti-aircraft guns, they're really forbidding.
All in all I found it rather aggressive, even a bit frightening.
That might well be the whole idea of the Parade, come to think of it.

Now we were in Lille and after watching the defilé IRL on tv we lined up for the Lille version. Groups marched by, proudly showing their colours. Then there was a bit of a gap in the proceedings.
Cars arrived: the parade of the emergency services.
The police. The ambulances. A couple of tanks. The fire brigade.
6 men on bicycles. Everyone applauded and it all felt much warmer then the Paris version. We stayed till the end (see the last picture!).