Cavendish and Cadel

This was Brian's goal: The Final Stage of Le Tour de France 2011, Creteil to Paris Champs-Elysees.

Since the stage ends near the Arc de Triomphe, we stopped there first and climbed only 284 steps to the top (trivial Julia says after 670 steps to level 2 of the Eiffel Tower).

Note the yellow in our outfits, Brian's new hat, plus my "climber champ" scarf.

We had a great view from up there of the boulevard empty and ready for the racers.

We thought this would make Uncle Peter happy.

Turns out that before the race, to entertain fans who started lining the streets before 10:00am (we committed to our spot about 1:30pm), there is something called a caravan.

All these crazy people hired by the major race sponsors dance and zigzag around the course roads with loud music. Some new Australian friends told us they gave away products at the earlier stages.

These are the crowds about 50 minutes before we saw our first racer speed by our spot.

At long last the riders appeared. Miraculously we caught on film the yellow jersey worn by the overall leader and eventual Tour winner, Cadel Evans, in our first photo attempt.

On the next lap (there are eight circuits in Paris, and we saw them coming and going), we caught a glimpse of the green jersey winner for the best sprinter, Mark Cavendish.  He's the chap in the lighter green just to the left of our tree, kindly on our side of the pack.

And there's the mountain climber points champion, Samuel Sanchez, in white with red polka dots.

This is a photo of the pack of riders heading toward the finish line, to our left and they then had to circle back around Place de la Concorde and to the finish. We could not see the finish; we could only hear the French announcer saying multiple times, "Cavendish" the French way, cah-vahn-deeesh, so we figured out that he had won the stage and thus the green jersey. Cadel Evans, at age 34, won his first Tour de France. And we had a great time being part of the event!