Tour de France
 

We just discovered that our time in Paris will coincide with the last leg of Tour de France.

It's on a Sunday...will the event curtail any existing operating times for area sights? Will stores/restaurants be opened to take advantage of the crowds around Champs elysees? Or will those that usually are open on Sunday decide to close up?

Just wanting to prepare our itinerary to allow for this event.

The Tour de France is just a blip on the Paris radar. You can spend the day in 85% of Paris and not even know that the Tour de France exists.

The Champs Elysées and the western part of rue de Rivoli will start closing down around 1 pm. The metro stations in the same area will also start closing about that time.

Crowds will gather. Cycles will whiz by a dozen times. It will all be over by 5:30 pm.

My own strategy is generally to see two or three loops near the Tuileries tunnel. Then I take the metro home as fast as possible (it is direct from Concorde to my place). The end of the race is ten times better on TV than in person.

Restaurants and stores sure aren't going to be closed to miss all that business. It isn't a national holiday. Especially the ones right on the Champs-Elysees have tons of business and take full advantage of it (like Fouquet's). Those stores are open on Sundays all the time, anyway, though.

The streets where the course is will be closed off, of course (and earlier, there is the publicite parade which is actually fun, I like it).

They usually have the winner at a huge platform (which large screen projection) around the place de la Concorde, so it is really really crowded down there. If you don't have a view high up, you can't see much of anything, though, except tops of their heads if you are lucky. The best view is those folks who stake out the top floor of the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees which has a few windows overlooking the street--or any business that has a second floor.

If you want to avoid that madness, just stay away from the Champs-Elysees. I think it usually is on parts of the rue de Rivoli, also, that's where I saw the publicite parade one year, earlier in the day.

Besides the tour has been cancelled this year due to the fact that every qualified rider has doping allegations pending.

"I WON!" (I TOLD you my steroids were better than yours!)