On Sunday morning, we all got on the metro and headed down to the​ Ile de la Cité​ for a touristy bike trip organized just for us. Gliding around like swans on big cruiser bikes, we had a couple of hours of history and sightseeing thanks to Pierre, the local history guide. 

I saw some sites I had never seen, and learned some facts I didn’t know, and overall it was a pleasant way to spend the morning while we waited for things to kick off in the afternoon…
Wallace fountains

Shakespeare and Company

St. Sulpice, the “Magic Line” featured in the Da Vinci Code

Arènes de Lutece. 

Today we are in Paris, but the race is still bring decided in the Alps. We had the morning to ourselves, so after a big hotel breakfast Vlad and I set out for a walk around. We walked up the Avenue de la Grande Armée, past a drool-worthy array of motorcycle shops, until arriving at the Arc. 

We got all the way to the Eiffel Tower, which looked especially majestic in the bright blue sky. An exceptional melon with some nice Spanish ham made for a very pleasant lunch. 

We crossed the Seine and made our way back to the hotel, passing various historic monuments as we went. Here is a World War I Memorial featuring poetry by Allan Seeger, whom I have written about before.

Then we watched most of the stage as a group at the hotel, and met the final additions to our party: a family whom Mummu gave the trip to after they entered a drawing. They have three kids, and the entire family are big sports fans, crazy for cycling and all sorts of other things. It was an exciting stage, with mountains and rain and crashes and a very tense battle for second and third place. However, as I have mentioned before, it just isn’t the same for me without the commentary I’m used to. I have no idea how much Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen bring home each year, but they are worth every penny of it as far as I’m concerned. Even if Phil does seem increasingly fuzzy on some of the facts…

We had dinner at one of the restaurants we wished we had found the night before, featuring a big seafood platter on ice and a whole complicated assortment of artisanal oysters. Delicious!

About two hours before the race comes by, as a sort of warm-up act for the fans, there’s a parade! Major sponsors put cars on the road, dressed up as floats, and drive along the route playing music, and – most importantly – providing a way to throw trinkets and swag to/at the crowd.

With thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people lining the sides of the roads, often little tiny roads with nothing else available to do, the caravan plays an important part in each day’s festivities. All the excitement is, of course, completely artificial, manufactured. Nonetheless, it is exciting, and I found myself as swept up in it as any of the eight-year-old kids I had to jostle out of the way as we grubbed around for tickets.

Nobody in our group needed a flimsy hat, more refrigerator magnets, keychains with tiny flashlights, or the (admittedly delicious) little cookies and cakes that got tossed our way. However, the caravan is not about need… The caravan is about the hunt, the wanting, the scrambling. Of all of us, Manny was the most dedicated swag-grabber. However, I did my share, and ended up with a whole shopping bag full of stuff. And a few more shopping bags: another useful item they gave away.

One of the most practical items being tossed out was little packets of laundry soap, and Vlad (who grew up in the post-war Soviet Union) was very crafty in grabbing several packets for us to use in our hotel room. The pretty girls (and boys, but mostly girls) who staff the float cars showed amazing energy… They were dancing and waving just as energetically when we saw them at the finish line as at the start: 4 to 6 hours of enthusiasm. Ugh.

There’s an art to the throwing of trinkets. On the one hand, you don’t want to put anyone’s eye out, so you have to throw low, at people’s feet. On the other, you have to reach the people who are in the second or third or fifth row back, so you have to wing some out overhead. We heard someone mention that 30 million pieces of corporate nonsense get tossed into the crowd over the course of a year. I didn’t hear about any injuries, but the company that threw little tiny salamis must worry about knocking someone’s drink out of their hand from time to time.

The bike-riding chicken was my personal favorite… One of several vehicles that this chicken nugget company had in the parade.

During one of our visits to the Departure Village area, I tried to get a picture with hot french fry girl, but she was busy on her phone… Maybe next year.