The Champs-Elysees

              The Champs-Elysees. That’s where the Tour de France ends. That’s also where we spent most of today. We were tired after driving so far yesterday, so we had a late breakfast and didn’t get out of our hotel until almost 10am. We made our way down to where the race was ending, early because we were forewarned by several people, who told us that the crowds gathered early and they weren’t wrong. We walked completely around the circuit that they were covering. It was in Joani’s estimation about a 5 or 6 km walk and people were already setting up camp at 11am, fully seven hours before the riders were expected to arrive. These fanatics had food, lawn chairs, coolers full of drinks, and big umbrellas to keep off the sun. We had none of these things and there was no way that we would be able to camp by the crowd barriers for six or seven hours like they were, without any camping equipment and we had no intention of buying some, so we just decided to do a little more touring and come back later to see what we could find for a viewpoint.

 It quite often seems to me, that when Joani and I travel we do so under a lucky star, and today was no different. We had lunch, visited the neighborhood where we stayed our first time through Paris and around 3pm we headed back to the Champs-Elysees to see what we could find. The course was even more crowded and just as I was getting a little bit discouraged about how much we were going to see, we came upon some sort of pylon that was bolted to the ground, with a round flat plastic top just wide enough to sit or stand on. At first I wondered whether it was off limits for some reason but there was a police officer right in front of us and he looked at us several times without saying anything. Fortune favours the bold and we had lucked out again. For the next three hours we took turns sitting on our little stool, and when the race started we took turns standing on it. We had the best sightlines in the house as I’m sure you will see with the photos I have attached.

We got a few of the lead group and several with the Maillot Jaune, (yellow jersey).

One, that I have included of the yellow jersey is purely symbolic as he never actually led today, but since I got this perfect shot of him seemingly leading I thought I’d put it in.

There is another shot that I included of a team member hanging out of a car doing repairs without the rider stopping the bike! (Pure magic.)

  There is also a shot of jets with coloured streamers (red, white and blue to replicate the French flag) flying overhead when the riders started circling the Champs-Elysees.  (Check out the bird in the shot, just above the jets.)

  It was a long but fabulous day

 Coupled with seeing the mountain stage that we saw two weeks ago, I am extremely happy and content with our Tour de France trip

as well as the other things we got to do while we were here in France!