Bastille Day - crowded and horrible?

It's not horrible.

I was in Paris on Bastille Day a few summers ago with a girlfriend. We went to Giverny for the day.
Apparently the local Paris fire stations have street dances on Bastille Day. We got to the local fire station too late. Anything that had gone on was over. At midnight we turned on the TV and opened up the hotel window to hear the fireworks while we watched the same fireworks on TV.
We had missed one train so were around the train station for lunch. It actually seemed quite normal and tame. What I am saying is, if you don't want to be around crowds just stay away from the Eiffel Tower after dark.

We'll be there too! We're headed to Versailles for the day, not to get out of the crowd exactly. That's the only day that works in our schedule to get there. They will have the fountains flowing during parts of the day and lots of cool things going on. I'm sure it will be busy out there too and crammed on the metro back into the city around the time of the fireworks. Gotta be there for those though! IT happens to be our daughters' 13th birthday that day. Not a bad way to spend your birthday if you ask me. I'm interested to read what others say as well!

Street dances are on the night of the 13th and go until the wee hours of the morning. So if you show up after sunrise on the 14th, you've missed it.

Paris will be no more horrible or crowded then any other day from late may thru September. . EXCEPT for the Champs Elyssees and Arc de Triomphe area when the parade is on ( I dislike those areas anyways.. so have no issue with avoiding them ) and the area around the Eiffel Tower where people start to gather later in afternoon to picnic in anticipation of the fireworks at night.

I have been to Paris many times on Fete Nationale and basically even forgot it was the holiday since I wasn't in those areas..

Now.. if you really hate crowds you will not like visiting the Louvre, Orsay or Versailles ( palace) any day between May and September anyways.. but there are plenty of quieter areas and museums to keep you busy.. The Invalids Army Museum and the Cluny Medieval Musuem are never crowded .. been to both several times in summer.. lovely museums also.. never encountered crowds at Carnevalet or The Shoah Memorial ( museum ) either..

Don't worry.. avoid the Champs Elyssees area and you will be fine.

Paris is an enormous city. If you don't actually go to the parade or fire works there will not be crowds. Heck one year we went to the Louvre and it was both free and very uncrowded because locals were enjoying their festivities. (alas July 14 is a Tuesday this year so the Louvre will of course be closed.) Paris is always 'crowded' -- it is a city.

The fire hall dances on the 13th are great fun; one of the highlights of our month in Paris back in 2003. We were last in France on Fete Nationale in Burgundy in a very picturesque small town in which absolutely nothing appeared to be happening at least publicly. We found in our driving that day that most shops were closed but we did manage to find an open restaurant for lunch and the chateau we had gone to visit was open to visitors but the village itself was pretty much shut down except for the one cafe where we lunched. This was Chateaunuef en Auxois

You can avoid the large crowds by avoiding the Champs-Elysees during the day and the Champs de Mars in the evening. And a decent proportion of Parisians will start their summer vacations then, so some of them will be gone. It's not horribly crowded.

We had Steak and Frites in a little café on The Champs Elysses on Bastille Day at noon and enjoyed the parade, it was fine. Mind you this was some 12 years ago, expect not much has changed
That night we saw the fireworks at Eiffel Tower from the steps of a church up a hill overlooking the city, don't remember what it was called