Le Tour de France

Today we had the awesome opportunity to see the final stage of the Tour de France. The race's final stage concluded on the Champs-Élysées as it has every year since 1975. So after an early morning trip for Mom, Carol, and me to an awesome antique market (saving the markets for their own post), we headed back to meet up with the others.

We made our way to the Champs-Élysées and found a pretty good spot. We still had to wait a few hours before the cyclists showed up, but there was a parade and big screens to watch the procession through Paris.

This is close to the Concorde monument. The cyclists looped around it several times before taking off for Champs-Élysées. We originally were going to stay here, but decided to try to get closer to the final action.




We made it to the final stretch








Interesting parade of sponsors




Check out this cool guy




And we saw plenty of British/Wiggins pride!












This was part of the final stretch and where we stood!




First came the official vehicles




And lots of security




And finally--the cyclists!




Wiggins (in yellow)was just making it into this shot




And he was flying by us in this one, so it was a little blurry as I tried to catch him!




It was awesome to be able to see this major sporting event! Congrats to the British on their first Tour de France victory and congrats to Tejay van Garderen- the American who was 5th overall and won the white jersey for best young rider. We are headed to London again tomorrow morning, so I'm sure we will continue to see plenty of British pride. We'll be repping for the USA as we head back into Olympic territory!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Rue Lhomond,Paris,France