Paris 2024

Adventures In the South of Spain Goes North to France!

First Stop : Nantes (July 29-August 1)

When Paris announced they would host the 2024 Summer Olympics, our daughter Jackie proclaimed “We should all go!” To be honest, we didn’t take her too seriously until about a year ago when she insisted it was time to start planning in earnest. To put things in context: in 2008, our daughter Christine competed in the Beijing Games and earned two silver medals in swimming. Jackie, Bill, and I traveled to China to cheer her on.

This trip was our first return to the Olympics; this time with Christine as a spectator. We were joined by Jackie’s husband Greg and their two children, and Greg’s parents. Some members of our group were visiting Paris for the first time and others were returning. It was my third time to the “City of Lights.” To combine the beauty of Paris with the Olympic Games was too tempting to pass up.

In the fall of 2023, the Paris 2024 Family Calendar was born. Nine of us committed to the August 2024 trip. We got busy booking lodging, buying train tickets, buying tickets to events, making dinner reservations, booking day tours, reserving museum entries, and reading guide books. We planned to meet in Paris on July 29th and board a train for Nantes on the Loire River for a three-night stay and a soccer game.

We strategically packed our carry-on bags for a month of travel, as Bill and I were heading to the UK from our Paris adventure. After overnight flights from Chicago, Austin, and Milwaukee, the nine of us met in the regional train terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Lattes and croissants all around!

The high-speed train trip to Nantes was comfortable and and we passed the time reading, snacking, and dozing. The highlight was when our granddaughter lost a tooth! The low point was when John and Jan’s duffle bag was stolen from the luggage rack. They were determined not to let that dampen our fun, so they approached their loss as an opportunity to purchase some French fashion and to utilize the French health care system. John learned that American bodies don’t fit well in skinny French pants and that he could save a lot of money on his medications in the French pharmacy. Jan looked fabulous in her new clothes!

Nantes is France’s third largest city, but it has a small town feel. The city center is charming and walkable. You can follow the 7.5 mile Green Line through town, past architectural highlights and public art installations, or you can ride the free trolley. Taxis and Ubers are plentiful and there is a tram, which we rode to the soccer stadium. Adults can enjoy nearby vineyard tours, but we chose to spend our free day visiting the kid-friendly Les Machines de I’lle. We rode the three-story carousel made of steel creatures a la Jules Vernes’ Twenty Thousand leagues Under the Sea. After that, we observed “the mechanical elephant” but declined to spend the waiting time to ride it. The kids preferred a stop in the gift shop and then it was on to lunch at a riverside restaurant.

On Wednesday, July 31, the nine of us took the tram to the Nantes soccer stadium to see the Nigerian Women battle the Japanese Women for our first Paris 2024 event. Even at 5pm, the sun was intense and the temperature about 37 degrees Celsius (close to 100 F) . When we spotted empty seats in the shaded section, we moved! We drank plenty of water and ate some salty snacks to keep us from dehydration. The game was exciting, the Japanese prevailed 4-1. After the game, we boarded the tram for the ride back to town and some refreshing gelato at Amorino.

Our stay in Nantes gave us a chance to recover from overseas travel and adjust to the time zone before our stay in Paris. We were unprepared for the extreme August heat and many hotels in France do not have air-conditioning. We ended up changing hotels after our first night in Nantes; not the hotel’s fault. Nantes is a great destination to enjoy leisure activities, good food, and friendly people.

(Double-click on photos for better viewing)

Next Stop: Paris