Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Their Today Co-Hosts Reveal the Biggest Perk of Broadcasting from Paris Olympics (Exclusive)

While temperatures were soaring into the mid-90s in Paris on July 30, Today's co-hosts couldn't have been cooler — because they're so well-rested!

"So we get up and start our day at a normal hour," Hoda Kotb tells PEOPLE. "We're shocked about it because typically we wake up 3, 4 in the morning. Here we're getting up at —"

Her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie jumps in, "Eight, some of us 9 or 9:30 [a.m.]."

It's been a nice adjustment from the usual schedule of "crack 0-dark-30," Al Roker adds.

Today moved four of its co-hosts and production to France for the duration of the 2024 Olympic Games. They're broadcasting from Café de l’Homme in Trocadéro Square with an outdoor balcony set and an envious backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.

While they're all quite obviously tickled by the extra time for zzzs, the real "privilege" of Today's Olympic access is meeting America's hero athletes.

"Our show here is like a circus because we start off, we do our news of the day, and then one by one people are shuffling through. Bronze medals, silver medalists are coming through," Kotb, 59, says.

Adds Guthrie, 52, "They come and it's so fun because we get to just wrap our arms around the athletes and we get to share a message: 'Your country is so proud of you.' And that's so fun for us. It's such a privilege to be in that moment where their lives are changing, where their dreams are coming true, or everything they've worked so hard for has now paid off in this moment. . . . We get to witness that."

The fun isn't contained to the set, though. Guthrie, Kotb, Roker and Craig Melvin have been shooting all over the city and taking in the sights. They've been to Versailles, gone cheese shopping with Ina Garten and even attended a show at the Moulin Rouge (in fact, on the morning of PEOPLE's visit, some of the iconic cabaret's dancers were there).

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Guthrie, in particular, was tickled by their time at the palace: "They opened it up just for us on a Monday. They're usually closed. We still can't believe it. We walked through the front door, we knocked, and they let us in and they gave us, literally, keys to the palace."

"We were so blessed and fortunate," she summarizes. "There's all these pinch me Paris moments."

Melvin, 45, pivots during his evening to focus on Games coverage for NBC Sports. His wife, Lindsay Czarniak, is also a reporter and is covering the Olympics stateside.

"My wife is on Eastern time, midnight until 8:00 a.m. [EST] and then we come on at 7:00 a.m. [EST] and then I'm on for five hours after that," Melvin tells PEOPLE. "So theoretically for our family, they can watch us off and on for the better part of 14 hours."

Jokes Roker, "The Melvins have taken over."

While the Melvins may be dominating U.S. airtime, in Paris it's the Today family that the co-hosts are seeing the most — and cherishing.

"The other part of it is — and I'm very serious about this — that we all get to hang out together because look, we really do enjoy each other," Roker, 69, tells PEOPLE. "But in the states — one thing, they've all got small kids. They got lives, they got to do stuff. The fact that we get to hang out together, it's like summer camp. We get to go to events together. We're working together, meals together, dinner together, and the company's paying for it."

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come to people.com to check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. And sign up for Going for Gold, our Olympics newsletter, to get the biggest stories from the Games delivered straight to your inbox. Watch the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, beginning July 26, on NBC and Peacock.