One of the main reasons we choose to come to Paris this weekend was to see the famous event, The Tour de France! One of the guys traveling with us is a Little 500 Rider at Indiana University. Little 500 is a yearly bike race held at our university that is widely known and celebrated. The riders take the sport very seriously, so Mike was overly excited today to see the world cup of cycling. He got up super early to get a spot in the front row, so he wouldn’t miss anything. The rest of us were tired from the night prior and decided to take the morning to sleep in. Around noon we all met up and took the train to the station to drop off our bags in lockers so we would avoid carrying them around in the crowds all day. After a quick breakfast, we headed to the Champs-Elysees to join Mike for the bike race.

People were everywhere! Compared to the Running of the bulls in Pamplona this was a cake walk, much more sophisticated crowd, but they were everywhere. We arrived around noon and we stood for 5 hours with the rest of Paris waiting to celebrate all the men that had just made it through a month of cycling across all of France. I can not begin to imagine how they all felt to have the race finally over with! We grabbed sandwiches while we waited for the cyclists, and played games to keep ourselves busy. It was a very cool experience, since it is a famous event, but personally I don’t think I would attend again. Waiting 5 hours in the same spot to see the group of bikes whiz by for 5 seconds is a long day! But like I said, I am glad to be able to say that I have seen it, and when they went by it was amazing to see how that group of bikes kept their speed while riding so close together, and to think they had been doing that for a month. Wow!

I will have to add that we were “Those Americans” at the race! We all bought the bright yellow Tour de France shirts and wore them. We stood out in the crowd and had fun doing so! After the race was over we were nervous and cutting it pretty close to making our train back to Maastricht that evening. We finally made it through the crowds and made it back to the station to grab our bags, and even get some dinner before the train left. On the way home we did the usual recap of the highlights of our trip, and laughed a second time about them.

Side Note: At the end of the trip Josh and i were both talking and agreed that Paris has to extreme sides to it. It is the most beautiful, dirtiest city I have ever seen it. I without a doubt will return to see the rest of the city, but you can get outside of the main city and there are some pretty rough areas. Not all of the subways are kept as clean as I am accustomed to… I was surprised at parts of it… but my breath was taken away at others!