Our Blog - Paris Olympics 2024 - Paris, France
Sometimes people decide on a once-in-a-lifetime event, while others don't ever do one, and still others do several of them during their lifetimes. We had decided several years ago that our once-in-a-lifetime event would be the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. When we lived in China, we went to Japan several times and Tokyo is on the top of our list of favorite cities. So it was perfect for us to try to go. We were lucky enough to get tickets, then booked flights, train tickets, and hotels. Then COVID happened and it was postponed until 2021 (and in the end, no public spectators were permitted), at which point we were able to get refunds for everything.
So then we turned our focus to Paris 2024 and put our names into the lottery draws for tickets. We again were lucky enough to be selected for tickets, and so we bought tickets, then booked train tickets, and a hotel. Mind you ... not at the same time :-) We booked the hotel as soon as we got the first set of tickets (3 events), going directly to a B&B in Paris that we had stayed at before. The train tickets were purchased about 3 months before our trip but we weren't concerned as there are quite a few ways to get to Paris if, for some weird reason, we couldn't get train tickets.
We had dinner reservations for every night that we were at the games, and met up with friends who live in Paris who did not leave the city during the games. There were a few additional historical/tourist sights that we had been to before but we wanted to return to, like Notre Dame and the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
 | The Torch Fast-forward a bit to April/May 2024 for the Torch Relay. The Olympic Torch Relay is a tradition that takes place for every Olympics now, with the Olympic flame traveling from the sanctuary of Olympia in Greece, where the ancient Olympics were once held, to the host city of the Olympic games. This year the flame caught a ride across the Mediterranean Sea aboard the Belem, France's oldest three-masted schooner which was launched in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympic Games. It arrived in Marseille and then started its journey across France. The flame ended up going more places than we have been to! One of the places that it came through was Toulouse, where we were lucky enough to have a front-row (or in our case, a front-balcony) seat for the passing. The torch itself was designed based on three Paris 2024 symbols: Equality, Water and Peacefulness. To symbolize equality, the Torch is perfectly symmetrical, both horizontally and vertically. There are waves or ripples in the middle, symbolizing the water, and peacefulness is supposedly symbolized in the smooth curves and round lines. There were a total of 2,000 torches produced for these games. I put together a short Torch blog to show a couple pictures/videos of the torch as it passed by. |
The Opening Ceremonies We did not attend the Opening Ceremonies but I did watch all 5 hours of local coverage of it. I'm not sure how the NBC coverage of it was different, if it was at all, other than I didn't get to see Peyton Manning and the playbook on his arm that supposedly he joked he had written notes in about the countries and athletes (yea, I'm pretty sure I am glad I didn't have to see that one!). I have a Opening Ceremonies blog with pictures of my TV set (mostly) with some of the coverage. Watching all of the rain that came down, I was really glad that we weren't there in person. As you can see from the little graphic here, the Eiffel Tower is a central part of these games in a few ways. First, the Olympic Rings have been installed on the tower since June 7th. It was a large part of the end of the opening ceremonies with a fantastic light show. Each and every medal for the Olympics and the Paralympics contains a piece of metal from the tower and the ribbons feature the latticework of the tower. There is also a temporary outdoor arena built in the Champs de Mars at the foot of the tower that will host the beach volleyball competition. | 
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We decided to take the train up to Paris, since it is about the same time door-to-door as a flight and the seats are way more comfortable! Mind you, a couple days before we were taking the train, there was an interruption to the high-speed train system in France due to a bit of sabotage, but our train ended up having no issues, thank goodness. We had planned an entire free day before events, so we were able to get to Paris, check into our B&B, have lunch with a friend of ours who lives in Paris, and spend some time in one of the fan zones.
We saw this on the subway ... it looks like Lucy when she was a baby. I can imagine the caption of "NO NO NO ... not a CAT!" since she isn't a big fan of them.
And these ads for Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the metro stations are just funny ... the first one saying "the best croissant of Paris." and the 2nd says "Pain au chocolat or chocolatine? End of the debate." For those who don't get the 2nd one ... there is a long-standing debate on the naming of the exact same thing if you are in the Northern part of France (including Paris) and the Southern part of France (including Toulouse). Those of us in Toulouse order a "chocolatine" while Parisians order a "pain au chocolat". Our local bakery in Toulouse actually has both a chocolatine AND a pain au chocolat on the menu ....the chocolatine is what we expect (the same type of dough as a croissant but in a different shape and 2 things of chocolate inside) while the pain au chocolat is almost a literal translation .. "bread with chocolate" ... so it is bread dough with chocolate chips baked in.
A friend of ours send us these pictures (thanks Chris G.!!) dealing with Corgis and the Olympics. Lucy didn't join us us in Paris for the Olympics (thank goodness ... it was TOO hot), instead relaxing in the air conditioning at her "Aunt Lisa's" place.
Our Events
We bought tickets for 6 events. Some of our logic for what we tickets we bought were that the Olympics needed to be the pinnacle of the sport (so no golf or basketball tickets). It had to fit into the right timeframe (so no rhythmic gymnastics for me, as it was the week after we were planning to be there). It also couldn't be (what in our opinion was) stupidly expensive (so no swimming for Tom). In the end, our Paris Olympics schedule included (pictures and videos will be in Part 2 of the blog):
- Table Tennis
- Badminton
- Ladies Volleyball
- Men's Gymnastics (my splurge item)
- Trampoline Gymnastics
- Synchronized 3m Springboard Diving
And with that .... We're OFF ...
And now ... click here to continue on to Part 2 where I will take you day-by-day through the week, with each of the events and a few Paris sights mixed in.