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Report 1939: Chateaux, Rillettes, Sunflowers, Mistral and Tour de France Triumphal Finish

By Anastasia from Canada, Summer 2011

Page 26 of 28: Paris with the Tour de France

Tour de France

We decided this incident wouldn't spoil our stay. After we checked into our room, they were nice enough to let us check in earlier, we went shopping for some wine, a chicken and toys for our son. It stopped raining and despite a rainy forecast the weather became warmer and sunny and remained that way for our stay.

We wanted to use the bateau-bus this time too for our short stay. We were already at the Louvre station, where we purchased our two days tickets and we cruised to the Eiffel Tower. There were thousands of people under the tower and also at Trocadero where we went for views with fountains. We stayed there for a while. We then took the bateau-bus to complete the tour and continued to the closest station to our hotel, St-Germain.

Once in our room we made a big picnic with terrine, chicken and some sausages, and bread, with wine and beer we had previously purchased and arranged the beds and covers so our son could sleep between us. I had a chat with the maid who was finishing our room when we first arrived who was really compassionate, and she left us an extra pillow and sheet for our son.

My husband didn’t succeed in connecting to the free WiFi although the signal was strong it seemed it wasn’t activated. I called the guy at reception and he made us try several passwords which didn’t work. The TV only had analog quality signal and only provided a few channels, half of which we could hardly see.

I succeeded to check in to our flight using my husband’s data-phone and the free WiFi services at the hotel.

In the morning we took the metro to Eiffel Tower after a quick breakfast for €2 per person for a café and croissant at one of the nearby bakeries, but the lineup was already huge. I couldn’t understand what was going on. So we took the bateau-bus to Champs Elysees stop to get to the Arc de Triomphe. When we got closer to the streets we understood why there were crowds everywhere: it was the final of the Tour de France. Main streets were closed and we needed to use metro accesses to cross a street. After we reached the Arc, we just took the metro to our favorite bistro, Chez-Flottes. It was difficult to move in the crowd, but fortunately it was very close.

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