Tour de France

(Katherine) Today was another landmark day on France’s calendar - the final day of Tour de France! We aren’t normally avid biker fans, but I felt like we should take advantage of the fact we were in Paris as the bikers rolled in off their journey. We didn’t really know many details about exactly when they would arrive or where the finish line was located, but we knew to head towards the Champs-Élysées. We took the Metro and decided to get off at the Concord stop, and police had barricaded the area to force every one out into one exit. As it turned out, just after we popped out of the station, the bikers were approaching our corner! We scrambled to get out our cameras but missed this first pass. We overheard that they would be making another, so we stood ready and managed to catch the second one on video. Some people had been there since 7am, and we had been there for 7 minutes!

We thought that was the end of the excitement so we left our corner and kept heading towards the Champs-Élysées. I noticed another crowd forming down another street ,so we headed down to what turned out to be the resting point for many of the teams RVs and support cars, including Lance Armstrong’s team sponsored by The Shack (Radio Shack.) It turns out that the bikers were still riding around the Place de la Concorde, so we captured even more photos and footage, and I’m pretty sure we saw Andy Schleck walking around the area.  See below for footage we took at the event which Robert turned into a movie montage.

We continued our quest to Champs-Élysées and decided to stop for a beer at a cute outdoor café we had spotted on our last trip down this street, Unisex which is part of the Madrigal hotel (very similar to the Standard in LA.) We noticed there was still a huge crowd formed along the street, so upon finishing our beer we wandered up and realized that all of the teams were taking a victory lap down the Champs-Élysées! We snapped several photos including one of the winning team, but of course we were mainly waiting for The Shack and Lance Armstrong. They finally appeared and we snapped away, but I wasn’t sure if we had seen him. We moved to another location right by the finish line and caught them again going the opposite direction - this time I definitely saw Lance.

Robert then had a great suggestion - that we head up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe so could look down on the aftermath of the event, as well the rest of the city. Getting to the top is an adventure in and of itself - you have to walk about 280 steps up a narrow set of stairs that winds up one side of the Arc. Once at the top, there is a small museum and another small set of stairs to lead you to the observation deck. We took many photos, including several of the Eiffel Tower, and enjoyed our unique view of the Champs-Élysées, still decorated in it’s post-Tour de France glory. At one point, we even noticed the winning team ride back through the street, go past the barrier, and then take a renegade ride around Paris! The tourists below were all so shocked to see them that it took a few minutes for them to realize what was going on and grab their cameras.

It was finally time to leave the area because we had one more activity planned for the day. Robert had researched a free movie series that was playing at the Parc de la Villette. The park had put up a 100 foot screen and was playing movies every night for the next few weeks. We gathered up a make-shift picnic and enjoyed a classic, The Graduate, with French subtitles. I had actually never seen the movie, and marveled at how young Dustin Hoffman was, and how the Simon & Garfunkle soundtrack matched up with the storyline. Overall, this truly was a day to remember!

Footage of Tour de France