Late in planning this holiday, we discovered that the Tour de France is overlapping with our stay in Mulhouse. The 6th stage sets off from this small city, which is our home away from home for better part of the week! We are hoping to catch a glimpse of this iconic bike race through France. 

The start of this stage of the race begins in a park west of the city centre. The riders departs at 1:05 PM but there is a publicity parade called a “caravan” that begins at 11:05 AM. As we have a food & wine tour that begins at 13:45 PM in Colmar, France (a town 30 minutes north of Mulhouse by train), we cannot stay to see the start of the race. However, we can get to the parade and back on a train in time!

In the morning, we check to see if Uber is an option in Mulhouse. Since it is saying no drivers available, we head to the nearby train station to get a taxi. Our taxi driver takes us as close as possible to the park so we have a much shorter walk and arrive earlier. We basically just follow all the other people walking in the direction to the noise in the distance!

The festivities are quite lively ! We see pace cars and all sorts of other vehicles with Tour de France logos. Everything seems very yellow. There are many people here already and more arriving each moment. However, there is room to walk around and see the different vendors set up. The first thing we did when we arrived is buy t-shirts at the official shop in the back of a Tour de France van. Then off to the center of the area to see the parade. We wander around a little bit and collect all sorts of freebies they are giving away. It is so much fun!

When the parade begins, we are amazed by the huge floats that are sponsored by companies that whizz by at very high speeds. It really looks like a fast-forward parade. The people on the floats toss out some freebies from time to time, even the laundry soap. This is super fun. We are so happy we made a change in our plans to come down and enjoy this event. 

We do have to catch a train to get us to our afternoon tour in Colmar. The walk from the Tour de France staging area was about 30 minutes or so into the city center. We had some time to drop our goodies off at the apartment and to change into our Tour de France t-shirts so we can be matchy-matchy for our tour in Alsace. Mind you, the shirts are bright, bright yellow and could really not be much more obnoxious but we look really touristy-cute!