The morning began luxuriously with my longest sleeping-in yet of this summer; I didn't get up until almost 10:00 am. At 11:30 I met Drew, Linda, and Margaret and we made our way to the Place de la Concorde, the location of the finish line of the Tour de France. Although the cyclists weren't scheduled to arrive until 4:00 pm or so, the streets were already sufficiently lined with spectators that we weren't able to camp out in direct sight of the finish line, though we were within a few hundred meters. And then we waited. And waited. Drew and Linda decided to make the long trek around the Tuileries in hopes of finding a different place to watch, and so Margaret and I bid them farewell and waited. And waited. It was a dazzlingly sunny, clear day - one of the only days I can recall here without a cloud in the sky. On the plus side, that's good weather, and much preferable to a cold drizzle. On the minus side, I had forgotten my sunscreen in the room. My nose is kind of red now, and I escaped very lightly in comparison to Margaret.
But the inconveniences of waiting began to pay off a bit after 2:00 pm, when the caravan arrived. The caravan is a vast collection of vehicles that precedes the riders and is practically a parade. All of the sponsoring companies send out several cars or trucks or carts or really anything that moves, and they seem to be trying to outdo each other in the outlandish-decoration department. The whole procession took over an hour to roll and blare its way along our stretch of road, and I wound up with a whole lot of pictures of unusual cars.
After a while the exotic cars gave way to more subdued "official" sedans, and then to a trickle of police cars, just-in-case ambulances, and motorcycles. A constant commentary was broadcast over a nearby loudspeaker, but the French was too rapid and terse for me to follow, so I was never quite sure what was about to happen. Around 4:15, we looked across the plaza and saw the distant shapes of cyclists zooming along the road, and five minutes later the leaders rounded the bend before us and flew past, followed in a few seconds by the main body of cyclists. The peloton had arrived:
I learned that the cyclists all stay generally in one bunch so as to use drafts from each others' bikes to reduce drag, so it only took thirty seconds or so for the whole group to pass our vantage point. But luckily we had seven more chances to see them! The final stage of the Tour doesn't end until they've made eight laps up the Champs-Elysées, around the Arc de Triomph, down the Champs, and around the Place de la Concorde. So every seven minutes or so the entourage would come whipping past again, accompanied by cheers and yells and much waving of flags. Here's the one and only video I've taken so far this summer - it's the first lap and shows just how close we were to the route:
Thirty seconds or so after the cyclists vanished from our view for the eighth time, the crowd roared so loudly that I wished I knew who had won. (I actually didn't know until I looked it up back in my room a few hours later. Turns out that Bradley Wiggins of the UK won overall, as expected, and his teammate Mark Cavendish won the Paris stage.) And that was the Tour de France 2012. I'm happy to have gotten the chance to be a spectator.
But now I'm tired. Fortunately I'm not hungry - we went out to dinner and I had some very yummy teriyaki chicken and an incredible chocolate fondant with cream and vanilla ice cream for dessert.
And that was Sunday.
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