Leaving Saint-Brieuc + Paris day 1

Yesterday, we left Saint-Brieuc at 07:00am. There were a lot of tears, but a few happy faces too since we were going to Paris! Getting to Paris took about 6 hours. Right after lunch in Paris, the group split in 3. We tried to best accommodate what our students wanted to see in Paris by almost always giving them 2 or 3 options to choose from. During our stay in Paris, we will all meet as a group for lunch, dinner, and a couple of whole-group activities. For this reason, the Paris blog entries that you will see will be limited to one of the options that the students chose. For day 1, you will follow the group who wanted to see the French soccer team on the Champs-Elysées. For those of you who are still unaware, FRANCE WON THE WORLD CUP ON SUNDAY!! BRAVO LES BLEUS!! <3 The Bleus (what we call our soccer team here) flew back from Russia (where this year's Wold Cup took place) and landed in Paris at 4:00pm. Throughout the afternoon, approximately 300,000 people gathered on the Champs-Elysées to welcome back our team right after they landed. The plan was for them to hold the gold trophy from the rooftop of a bus to show it to the French people. We got to the Champs-Elysées around 3:00pm and waited for 3 hours to see Les Bleus. The students actually enjoyed the wait among all the French nationals, as the energy there was beautiful, intense, and represented a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them. After we saw the Bleus around 6:00pm, the crowd slowly made its way back home or to the bars. As for us, we walked to the River Seine to catch a boat ride to see all the famous monuments and sites along the river, at sunset :)

P.S. Students who did not go to the Champs-Elysées in the afternoon choose to go either to the Louvre Museum, or to the Opéra Garnier. The whole group was present on the boat ride.