When I retired two years ago I never made the now fashionable "wish-list" and in fact if I had made one I doubt at the time if a trip to Paris would have been high on the list. I'd been to the french capital twice before but both were as part of school trips, most of the sites I'd 'done'. So why in late July did we travel by Eurostar to Paris, the answer in short was 2013 marked the 100th anniversary of the Tour de France.
My interest in road cycling is very recent largely founded on the 2012 Olympics and Bradley Wiggins success on the tour twelve months earlier. At the end of the school year a chance to grap a weekend away combined with watching the climax of one of the world's premier sports events proved irresistable.
However the planning was not that straightforward; I discovered that it was impossible to book seats on Eurostar more than three months in advance, it only took a few seconds to calculate that by the time I could seats on the train our chance of getting a hotel room would be nil.
By chance I saw an advertisement in the Guardian offering weekend city breaks and there listed was Paris and the weekend we required. I was on the phone quicker than you can say peleton !
Eurostar is an excellent way to travel I frankly do not understand those who make their way to airports to travel to Paris. St Pancras is central, the security checks are swift and there is no necessity for being at the terminal hours before departure. Eurostar seemed on the outward journey an efficient operation.
The journey to Paris was painless, bar a group of cycling enthusiasts a few seats away who serenaded the rest of the carriage which a variety of hits including Amorillo. All this became understandable when it became known that the buffet had run out of tonic so they took to drinking gin and champagne !
At Gard de Nord a coach took was to the hotel where a group of cyclists were checking in have been on a charity cycle from Helsingor (Sweden) to Paris. Friday evening allowed us time to explore the local area and gave me the opportunity to find somwhere to buy vegetarian food - a Lebanese take away.
Saturday morning brought a coach trip around the sites,
we jumped off before the coach departed for Verseilles and instead made our way to the Musee d'Orsay, after eating lunch in the Jardin des Tuileries. The museum was one of two reasons why I wanted to visit Paris. A collection of 19/20th century art housed in a former railway station, on the banks of the Seine.
On the walk we passed a statue to Thomas Jefferson, allowing me the opportunity to focus on the years after 1787 when Jefferson served as US ambassador to France.
The Musee was excellent and surprisingly not crowded and without the queue that I fully expected. On leaving Musee d'Orsay we had the idea that we should walk back to the hotel, what transpired was close to a five mile walk through sururban Paris in blistering heat broken for a fruitless mission to find the grave of Jean Paul Satre in a local cemetry .
Saturday night and Sunday morning offered further tours including a boat ride down the Seine
before we made our way to the Champs-Elysees to seek out a good viewing point for the arrival of the Tour de France. Arriving mid afternoon we were in the second row od spectators but by 8.30pm when the pelaton reached Paris the crowds were ten deep. Fortunately we found a spot opposite a video screen allowing us to see the riders enter the city on their ride from Verseilles.
The Champs -Elysees was an excellent location as we were able to see the race as the riders made their way to the Arc de Triomphe and then again as they circled down to the Place de Concorde.
( David Millar, who led the stage until the closing laps of the Champs d'Elysees)
Seeing Chris Froome win the 100th Tour was a special moment, and yes I bought a souvenir Tour tee shirt. We made our way back to the hotel and slept soundly after a beer at a local bar. The next morning there was time to buy some food for the journey and to take hour before the coach ride back to the station.
As our Eurostar train made its way across northern France it ground to a halt outside Lille. We were told there were power shortage in the area, yes France is heavily dependent on nuclear power, after a 90 minute delay we made our why to the tunnel and onto London. On arrival we were told that we would be given a half price ticket to travel on Eurostar again valid for 12 months for our inconvenience.
Three days where we packed so much in, saw a premier sporting event and have the chance to travel at a discounted price back to France in 2014. Can't be bad.
