Tour De France

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Tour de France

First leg of the race started in London and ended in Canterbury. We were fortunate enough to be able to drive over and take in the festivities.

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Setting up the street the morning of the big race.

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Jailee (sleeping) and mommy under the "Tour de FUN" sign. The rights to the actual tour logo is so locked down that the only signs toting it arrived with the promotional crowd later in the day. We couldn't even buy a T-shirt until we went to the finish line area where all the promoters set up camp!

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The Tower Bridge is on the big screen which is set up in the town center. The same location as the street ball the Friday night before. We watched the start of the race from here.

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After watching the start of the race we roamed around the open markets and other festivities of the day. Above: Jailee meets "Bumble", a British childrens program star. He is FiFi's best friend in FiFi and the Flowertots, one of Jailee's favorites! She was very excited to see him and even said his name before we told her whom it was, but as far as actually touching him - all he got was a fearful Hi-5 as she held mommy with a death grip!

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This is a miniature bike trail set up for the kids. They could ride through the world in just a minute or so. Places represented were USA (Hollywood sign), Egypt with pyramids, Italy with Romanesque columns, The antarctic with ice-like tents,.....etc

Although it was meant for the kids we did see a few adults racing their bike through the course as well.

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Below is the promotional procession. Basically its a commercial on wheels brought to you by most of the Tour de France sponsors.

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Finally!!!,...they arrive

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As quickly as you can scroll to the next picture, they had whizzed by us~

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Yep, hours of waiting for seconds of fun.

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These are the last of the stragglers, arrived maybe 15 seconds after the first.


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Now the race is over, we've sat on the grass to enjoy our wine, cheese and salami bought earlier at the market. We make our way toward the finish line to find that as quickly as they've come into our lives, they are leaving.

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The grand stand, after the race

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Packing it up, and it's only been over for about 45min! You can see Canterbury Cathedral in the background.

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Things are slowly returning to normal.

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All in all it was a great day. The weather was wonderful, even got a little tan while we watched the race. Afterwards we enjoyed a cold one on a grassy area across the street from a pub where we made our purchase and watched as things were dismantled.

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Below,....on our way back to the town center a couple of potty's caught our attention.

This one says "Loohire" - you all know the Brits call the bathroom the Loo. A far stretch from Honeybucket!

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This one really called our name!

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Hope you enjoy the pics!!!!

jx4