Our Plan...

Just thought maybe I'd post what we're planning for our trip. The Tour de France starts in London this year (I realize any cycling fans already know this, but there are potentially other friends and family reading this as well so I have to remember not to assume they know all about the Tour ;-) ). "Le Grand Départ" takes place from July 6-8, with the opening ceremony at Trafalgar Square on Friday evening, a prologue individual time-trial stage through central London on Saturday, and the first road stage from London to Canterbury on Sunday. We plan to watch the opening ceremony, the prologue stage, and to try to get out to Canterbury to watch the stage finish on Sunday.

On Monday we go by train (Eurostar - through the Channel Tunnel) to Arras in Northern France for a few days. We plan to cycle out to the Canadian war memorial at Vimy Ridge which is nearby, plus explore the area.

Then, we join a group trip in Paris to see the mountain stages of the Tour de France, with daily cycling options to vantage points to watch the race (seeing as it will be the mountain stages, that usually involves riding up a mountain pass a few hours before the Tour comes through). You might think that all there is will be a bunch of cyclists whizzing by each day, but there is actually the "caravan" of sponsors that goes through first each day (almost like a parade, from what I understand, with lots of freebies), and on the mountain stages the riders get quite spread out so there could be a half hour or more between the first and last riders going by. Plus, the atmosphere of the Tour is also what we're interested in - it's like the Stanley Cup playoffs here in Canada (generally without the Whyte Avenue riots of 2006 in Edmonton though).

We have a few days in Paris on our own at the end, including seeing the final stage of the Tour on the Champs Elysees, before heading home on August 1.