Pourquoi, Lance? Pourquoi?

On Sunday, we enjoyed a very nice breakfast at the hotel that I found very comforting and familiar oddly enough. They had little soft cheese packets as well as Nutella, just like my French family! The breakfast had a very wide array of foods, much more than I expected at a French hotel – croissants, baguettes, cereal, fruit, apple sauce, tea, coffee, two kinds of juice, pain au chocolat, yogurt, and other things that I’m sure I’m forgetting. It was very good. We then headed to the Eglise Reformée de l’Oratoire, a church not far from our hotel that is a member of the Reformed Church of France. The woman who greeted us was really nice, and she seated us near the front. The building was beautiful inside and had a very impressive organ.

It used to be a Catholic Church, but it has been the Eglise Reformée since the late 1800s, and if you look carefully at the walls, you can see the hooks and little metal pieces that once held up icons that have since been smashed off. The service was fairly easy to follow, for me at least, and the sermon wasn’t too shabby. The pastor did seem a little bit fluffy, if that’s the right word, and not terribly deep with his message, but it really wasn’t too bad. After the service, we went to a little reception off the sanctuary where mom chatted with an American man who’d been living in Paris for 25 years. I just enjoyed the free French pastries!! We stopped back at the hotel to change clothes before heading to lunch at Pomme de Pain, a cute café that you can find all over France. And then guess where we went….the TOUR DE FRANCE!!!!

I thought that seeing the Tour in Montpellier was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but as it turns out, it was a twice-in-a-month experience?? Hey, not complaining. We took the metro and got off at the top of the Champs-Elysees, right near the grand stands and the winners’ podium. We then walked down the Champs-Elysees towards the Arc de Triomphe a little bit until we found the perfect spot right up near the barriers and right underneath a giant American flag that the man next to us was proudly waving with his American friends. It ended up attracting a fair number of Americans by the time the Tour actually came by, so it was cool to be in good company.

It was insanely crowded, as expected, but we had a great view of the Tour route as well as the giant screen that showed a live feed of the race on France3. Mom and I actually got to the Champs-Elysees around 2:00, even though the cyclists didn’t come by until 4:30, because, first of all, I really wanted good spots, and also because the pre-Tour parade came by at 2:45! This time, I actually got to see the whole thing from the beginning to the end, and it was pretty cool. The concept of a parade here is quite different from that of an American parade, especially since all of the “floats” in this parade were more like drive-by advertisements, but it was still really fun. There were cars shaped like water bottles, tires, and of course cheese, along with lots of dancing, horn-honking, and a few semi-trucks, which was a little scary, especially when they were swerving around on the road to look cool.

In case you didn’t know, the Tour de France ends on the Champs-Elysees, but it actually goes up and back down the street 8 times before the finish line. The tension building up to when the cyclists first drove by was ridiculously intense, but I have to admit that I was definitely part of it. I was screaming with everyone else when they rode by. And they were going ridiculously fast, like ridiculously fast. I can’t describe how cool it was to be there – to see the helicopters flying overhead and to realize that they were filming me, where I was standing, what I was looking at; to see a live feed of what the rest of the world was watching on the big screen and realize that I was there in person; to watch Armstrong and Contador battle it out down the Champs-Elysees. I took a few videos and more than my fair share of photographs, and I screamed for Lance until I was hoarse….but clearly it didn’t help.

I was so disappointed that he only came in third, while the grumpy Spanish woman who pushed her way next to us even though she didn’t get to the Tour until 4:00 was annoyingly pleased that Contador won. You let me down, Lance. I was pulling for you. I really was. I did get to see them pull out the Tour de France finish line, which was really cool, and I also saw the crowning ceremony. Mom and I pushed our way further up the Champs-Elysees as soon as the Tour itself ended so that we could get a better view, and we ended up having decent views of the backs of the winners as they received their prizes. Booooooo Contador. I could read the disappointment all over Armstrong’s face…sigh.

We hopped back on the metro very quickly and managed to make it out of the crowds without much of a problem. We had dinner at this cute little Chinese place that the concierge at our hotel recommended for us. And I have to say that I’m a big fan of all of our concierges. They recognize us when we come by, and they’ll ask us specific questions about our day and they don’t need to ask for our room number anymore – they just give us the key. (In case that doesn’t make sense, in France, you don’t get to keep the room key most of the time, you have to turn it in and pick it up every time you leave the hotel). When we came back from the Tour, the concierge teased that he’d had a better view of the Tour than I did because he watched it on TV. I heartily disagreed of course, because we had a fabulous view. I guess I’m still a fan, Lance, but only if you give me an autograph.