Planning + Preparation
As soon as the Olympics were announced to be in Paris, my mind started to turn thinking about how I could get there and experience what would be a once in a lifetime trip. I asked my friend Casey about making this trip a reality and she was on board!
I started thinking about being in France during the summer and I realized that the Olympics usually start a week after one of my favorite sporting events, the Tour de France. It is not likely that the Summer Olympics will be in France again soon, so we had to take advantage of them taking place almost at the same time and fit them in the same trip!
We started planning over a year and a half in advance, since tickets went on sale in February of 2023. We had entered the lottery for a chance at a ticket purchasing slot for the first round of tickets, buying them in packs of 3 events at a time. We then kept up with ticket news and ended up buying tickets to other events through 3-4 more releases in the days leading up to the games. We ended up purchasing tickets to 12 events between the official ticket side and the resale site and sold one set to a soccer game we needed sleep more than we needed to go to that match.
As soon as we got our ticket buying process started, we booked our apartment in Paris in March of 2023. We planned on sightseeing between the end of the tour and the start of the Olympics, but when it was announced that the Olympic preparations would cause the Tour de France to NOT end in Paris for the first time EVER and ending in Nice instead, we had to make a quick pivot. We quickly changed our dates to make our trip longer and booked our apartment in Nice to catch the historic end to the race.
I had been to Paris twice before, but both times were spur of the moment with at MOST 2 weeks to plan, and they were VERY short trips, so there were NUMEROUS things I wanted to do while I was in town for such a long time. We started with a list of our MUST dos and then filled in from there. We may have gotten a little carried away with packing our schedule with events and attractions, but in the year leading up to the trip we had spreadsheets of booking windows and a constant email stream of fine tuning the schedule. It was probably the most well researched trip I have ever gone on because of the large amount of time we had between the time we booked and our departure date.
Our plans ended up settling on flights out of the US on Thursday the 18th of July, aiming to be in Nice on Friday to be ready to see the Tour leave Nice for the 20th stage on Saturday and witness the Grand Finale, the individual time trial, as it descended upon Nice to finish on Sunday. We would do some not-Tour-related sightseeing in Nice on Monday before taking the train up to Paris on Tuesday to settle in for a week and a half of tourist activities alongside Olympic events.
The Beginning of the Journey
Casey was flying from Houston in the early afternoon, and I was taking off from Atlanta late in the evening. Her flight took off and I had many hours to wait. We ended up leaving about 2 hours late, my plane landed, and I made my way through Heathrow to meet Casey to continue onto Nice. We quickly realized that something had happened while we were in the air….
THE MICROSOFT MELTDOWN…….
We decided to get lunch at Wagamama (as one does in London) and watched as our plane departure time slowly crept later and later. We went to the appropriate gate, and we were informed that our plane had no crew, and we were encouraged to get comfortable and to even visit the BA lounges should they be available to us because it could be a while. Luckily, we had made some friends, Paul and Mark, a father and son, who were also traveling to the Tour de France in the gate area, and they invited us to join them for an hour of relaxation and all the tiny sodas and candy we could enjoy! Our flight disappeared in the app, and we started panicking. We raced down to our gate, and it existed again. Then they informed us that since they had been waiting on a crew, the inside of the plane had gotten too hot on the hottest day of the year in London, and they couldn’t get it cool enough despite their efforts to cool it down and our flight was cancelled and we needed to “arrive into the UK” and leave the airport to take another BA flight DAYS LATER. That was unacceptable for a trip that was SPECIFICALLY to get to Nice that weekend to see the once in a lifetime arrival of the Tour de France.
That meant we had to find another way to get to Nice. Our friends had jumped onto the Air France website as soon as the cancellation was announced and secured the next morning’s flight to Nice to get them there by noon, and hopefully they would see the departure, but I wasn’t even sure that would work. I started crying in despair as we scanned our passports to “arrive” into the country and then we went to pick up our luggage at baggage claim.
We sat on the ground waiting to process this through our brains and find a way to get to Nice before at LEAST Sunday to see the final stage. I messaged my parents, we called multiple airlines, and then Casey googled “how to get to Nice from London” and it suggested a train. Our brains hadn’t even processed that it was possible to get across Europe that quickly until that point. We quickly secured train tickets for the next morning on the Eurostar under the English Channel to get to Paris to continue to Nice and arrive by 7pm Saturday night.
After securing a hotel across the street from St. Pancras station, and after a misguided search for the hotel in the wrong direction (yet only about 3 miles away), we arrived at the Megaro Hotel with its steampunk décor after traveling for over 24 hours ready to crash. We didn’t even care we hadn’t had dinner or anything to eat since 1pm, we only had to shower to get all the traveling germs off us and went right to sleep.
The next morning, we were FINALLY ready to get to Nice. You must arrive at least 90 minutes before the departure time, and with all our luck, we wanted to make sure nothing else would hinder our journey, so we left the hotel across the street 2 hours ahead. We even arrived before they opened the queue for our train and stocked up on snacks at the fun stores in the station. Since we booked so late, there weren’t many fares available and we had to get the first-class service, meaning breakfast! After going through the security and border patrol, and a short wait, we got on the train and off to Paris!
They were afraid that they wouldn’t have enough breakfast for all of us and we groaned that it was “just our luck” with this trip, but we lucked out and got a great breakfast as we went through the Chunnel!
We arrived in Paris to Gare du Nord and had to make our way to Gare du Lyon for our train to Nice. We needed a ticket to use the RER, so we made our way past numerous ticket machines with lines of 10 people at each. We knew that would take forever and we didn’t have much time. Good thing I had researched for a year and a half prior to the trip because I knew that we could purchase a ticket on our phone app and not need a physical ticket! We got our tickets and hopped on the next RER to Gare du Lyon. The stations as well as the trains were very busy, so we had to stand near the doors and hold on while we started sweating to death being squished by so many people. I was worried after this trek across town that when we returned to Paris in 3 days we would be overwhelmed everywhere we turned.
We arrived at Gare du Lyon and only had about 20 minutes before our train gates were opened, so we stopped into Paul, a famous quick lunch spot (especially in train stations) and I grabbed my first “sandwich mixte” which was ham and cheese (though I called it a “jambon beurre” thinking that the cheese was always included) and Casey accidentally ordered two chicken Caesar salads while we were ordering in French and then it was time to board the train!
We settled in for our 5 more-hour train ride, still sad that we were missing the Tour de France. I had heard that we could stream France itv, so I tried it, and it WORKED! I saw some of the race and then realized it wasn’t necessary to stream the entire race on the train Wi-Fi, so I aimed to turn it back on near the end. The train reached the coast, and we were treated to views of the gorgeous blue water and yachts dotting the sea along the Riviera. I started to hear noises like the ones I hear on tv while watching the Tour de France, and I realized that someone else was streaming the race, so I turned it on as well. We turned on the race just in time and got to watch the epic mountaintop finish while listening to the other passenger’s sound!
We made it to Nice!
We finally arrived in Nice and purchased our transit tickets (which had a Tour de France yellow jersey on it, yay!) and attempted to make our way to meet our apartment host in Vieux Nice (“Old Nice”). We had a bit of confusion when even the local transit app had our bus route a very different one than what we were experiencing with the detours for the race, but we made it to our apartment, FINALLY ready to enjoy the city and the Tour de France.
We had to give up our very coveted reservation the evening prior at la Merenda, but I was NOT going to lose out on our fancy dinner this evening, so we rescheduled it to 9pm to give us time to do a quick refresh before heading over to the port to one of the restaurants I was most excited about on this trip.
Nuances is a modern style restaurant that ONLY has a tasting menu for 55 euro. In the US, I would say “oh cool, tasting menu,” but when on vacation, and for such a cheap price of 55 euro, I said “OH COOL! TASTING MENU!” and booked it right away. The most exciting part about this restaurant is that even with the tasting menu, they don’t even give you the menu to peruse, they just start bringing out food! We told them we had no food allergies or restrictions, and I decided that I would eat whatever they put in front of me. They would bring out the dishes, have us eat them, and then when they came to collect the plates, they would say “so, what did you think that was?” We would then try to guess, sometimes HORRIBLY, then they would tell us all the intricacies of the dish and its ingredients. I’m going to walk you through our AMAZING meal, with ALL the pictures and as close to the description that we understood from the server.
We finished our meal, finally able to relax into our trip of a lifetime and wandered home along the Promenade des Anglais with all the people celebrating the arrival of the Tour the next day. We realized we missed out on the celebratory fireworks and drone show along the water, but the amazing dinner was worth it. Strolling down the time trial course set for the race into the late evening was a perfect way to end our first night in Nice.
Stay tuned for the next installment…..
Katherine's Next Trip! 
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