On the road to Paris

Over the course of the last month, there has been one main development in the road to Paris for the 2024 Olympics and that was in the area of accommodations.

I received an e-mail from the accommodation team in Paris stating that they had assigned me a room at F1 Paris Saint-Ouen Marche aux Puces, which is located in the Seine-St. Denis area of Paris, where the only new venue for these games, the new Aquatics Center, is being built. It is within five kilometers of the stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies and less than 10 kilometers from the Eiffel Tower and Roland Garros Stadium. The Main Press Center is about 11.5 kilometers away.

This will be the third Olympics in a row that I have stayed in an existing hotel after staying in dedicated media villages in both Sochi and PyeongChang. The initiative to cut back on costs of hosting the Olympics has likely been a factor in not really having traditional media villages, but rather putting media members up in hotels. Also, the fact that Tokyo, Beijing and Paris are major cities with thousands upon thousands of hotel rooms also is probably a factor. In both Tokyo and Beijing, I chose the hotels basically based on price and that was pretty much my deciding factor in this choice as well. I don't anticipate spending much time in my room other than sleeping, so it doesn't have to be anything special. 

My hotel in Tokyo had a pretty small room and limited food options, which became a problem when I had to spend my first three days in the hotel for my COVID quarantine. The Beijing hotel had a bigger room and much more in the food options, particularly in the breakfast that comes as part of our media package. It appears this Paris hotel will have more on the limited side of the food options. One of the best parts of Beijing was being able to eat a pretty large breakfast, which usually carried me through lunch so that I didn't have to spend money on two full meals a day, rather just one. That being said, I doubt Paris will have any shortage of places to eat.

This morning when I got to work, I signed what is called the Accommodation Management Agreement, which basically locks me into the rooms that they have assigned me. The bill is more than $2,000, a bit more than I paid in Beijing and Tokyo for similar hotel accommodations, but that is not terribly surprising for 20 nights. I did book especially early before the Olympics to maybe get there a bit ahead of time. I feel like it would be a nice change of pace to settle in to the whole situation instead of jumping right in. But, who knows.

Next up will be paying the first half of the invoice for the hotel, which will be due this month. The time spent making donuts full-time over the summer and close to full-time throughout the winter allowed me to put some money into my Olympic account to make sure I can cover this bill. The other big expense will be the flight, which I still have to work out. The Arrival and Departure System, or ADS, is expected to be live by the end of the year, at which time I can input my flight information and set up a way to get from the airport to my hotel.

It's less than a year until the Olympics and things are starting to get more and more official. 

At the one year to go celebration, dignitaries and others road on boats to replicate the opening ceremony planned for Paris next summer. Photo courtesy of Paris 2024.