Match 16 -- Scotland v. Romania

Saturday, 30 September 2023

My 16th match, and the 30th of the tournament, was Scotland v. Romania in Lille. This is my first time seeing each of these teams. 

Outside the stadium

View from my seat

With Scotland being one of the top five teams in the world, and Romania being more like 20th, this wasn't expected to be a close match.

This is the first time I could see artifacts of the soccer field's lines. Maybe they had a soccer match here between rugby matches.

The remnants of the soccer field's goal line and corner marking

It's also the first time I've seen a coach/trainer get up on a ladder to help the hooker practice his lineout throws.

The hooker throwing to a coach on a ladder

Scotland jumped out to an early lead. Romania earning three yellow cards late in the first half didn't help their cause. Romania was down a man from the 29th minute to the 47th. And for about eight minutes of that, they were down two. Scotland led 42-0 at the half.

This is the also the first time I've seen security personnel on the field at halftime. Perhaps they were expecting trespassers.

Security at halftime

The second half was much the same. In fact, score-wise it was exactly the same. Final score: 84-0.

I walked with a bagpiper back to the Metro. Well, I walked anywhere from 50 meters behind him to 100 meters ahead of him. But I could still hear him just the same. 😉

Getting on the Metro went as fast as it ever has. Lille has their act together.

But then ... the Metro train stopped twice unexpectedly between the Fives and Coulier stations. The first time was for about two minutes, but most of the lights went out. Then we moved again for a minute or so. The second time it stopped was for about 15 minutes, and all the lights stayed on. They made an announcement over the PA but I couldn't make out enough words to know what was going on. All in all, I still made it back to the hotel 65 minutes after the match ended.

...doug

Match 15 -- New Zealand v. Italy

Friday,  29 September 2023

My 15th match, and the 27th of the tournament, was New Zealand v. Italy in Lyon.

I tried a different approach and took the shuttle tram from just outside the main train station. It was not any less crowded. Even two hours before the match there were already hundreds of people in line. I still haven't found out how to buy shuttle tickets in advance, so I split off the main line to the "need to buy a ticket" line.

They had four people there with handheld credit card machines. I think the clerks were doing all they could, but maybe the connectivity was sketchy, because it was taking a minute or so for each transaction. (And they didn't take cash.) I decided to buy five shuttle tickets and gave the extra four to the next four people behind me in line. A 25 euro transaction doesn't take any more time than a five euro one, and it's certainly faster than three or four or five separate transactions. The New Zealand couple behind me was very appreciative. The husband even offered to send his wife to buy me a beer.  😀

The New Zealand couple and I then helped each other get to the stadium. When they were the last two through a checkpoint before it was cut off to wait for the next tram, they told the ushers that I was with them and got me through one batch sooner. I'm still trying to figure out who the guy reminded me of. The lady looked like Kathy Baker from Picket Fences. 

Italy is a tier one rugby nation (although pretty much at the bottom of tier one) so while I didn't expect them to win, I figured they'd make New Zealand work a bit. Nope. New Zealand won 96-17.

New Zealand warming up

National anthems. I seem to be on the opposite side of the player entrance nearly every match

Another least-bad photo of the haka

A few interesting bits of player trivia ... The New Zealand starting XV [rugby likes to use the Roman numerals when talking about the size of the team] included three brothers: Scott, Beauden, and Jordie Barrett. I thought this might have been the first time three brothers started in the same World Cup match. When I looked it up, I found that not only did the Barretts already do it in 2019, Tonga's Vunipola brothers did it in 1995.

When Sam Whitelock came on as a substitute early in the second half, he passed Richie McCaw to become the all-time leader in international appearances for New Zealand at 149. 

Another interesting thing about Sam Whitelock -- he's an example of what Tob and I call a "vocanym", and what I've seen more recently called "nominative determinism". It's the idea that some people have a name that fits their occupation. For Sam, it's part adjective and part noun. His rugby position is called "lock", and, well, he's white. If you know of others, tell us about them in the comments.

The return tram ride was just as crowded as when I took it to other locations, so my experiment didn't yield any improvement.  When the shuttle tram dropped me at the train station, it was about a block to the tram stop that would take me to the hotel. And I missed it by less than one minute. The next one was thirteen minutes out. I was very thirsty so I checked to see if any of the mini-marts in the train station were still open. Nope. There was a market a few blocks away but I wasn't sure I could get there and back in what was now about ten minutes. As it turned out, the next tram ended up being about five minutes late, so I would have had time. Instead, I took the tram about halfway back to the hotel, got off, walked a block to a mini-market, got an orange juice, walked on to the next tram stop, and got on the next tram. By the time I got to my stop and walked to the hotel, it was after 1:00 a.m.

...doug 

Day 19 -- Lyon

Monday, 25 September 2023

No rugby today, so I took some time to explore the little part of Lyon between the Rhône and Saône rivers. That area is called the Presqu'île. 

I walked south along the Rhône. 

Looking across the Rhône 

Much of the way I was able to walk right along the edge of the river, but part of the route had a highway in the way. 

The river walk -- sycamore trees everywhere

Architecture: Hotel Dieu in Lyon

The Rhône. A juxtaposition of rundown barge houseboats on the nearside and extravagant river cruises on the far side 

One of the houseboats is being used as a homeless shelter. Very neat idea

Architecture: a tram bridge across the Rhône 

This one is for Mitzi and Steve

I reached the confluence.

The confluence. I'm still not sure why there is a train track going out into the water

Looking back upstream. The angular steel and glass building in the top center is the Confluence Museum

The Lyon tourism committee enjoys the anagram

And then it was back north along the bank of the Saône. The Saône had a good river-walk the entire way.

Left and Right on old grain silos

How do French kids learn their gauche from their droit? Do they contort their gauche hand into the shape of a "G"? English has it pretty good with "left" starting with "L".

I don't know if Lyon is really the Capital of Funk, but someone certainly thinks so

A pedestrian bridge across the Saône 

Le Poids de Soi -- The Weight of Oneself

Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon

...doug

Match 14 -- Japan v. Samoa

Thursday, 28 September 2023

My 14th match, and the 26th of the tournament, was Japan v. Samoa in Toulouse.

Japan and Samoa are 13th and 12th in the world rugby rankings, so this ought to be a good match. I walked from my hotel to the Rugby Village, where I got the flags of Japan and Samoa painted on my face. While in line for that I talked to a group of four guys from Spain. I think they said they were from near Barcelona. Two of them were Samoa supporters, and two were decked out in Japan gear. It was fun talking to them for a few minutes.

I then walked from the Rugby Village to the stadium. A bit more of a bottleneck than usual at the security screening. They have women to frisk women, and men for men. Rather than having them at roughly every other position like other stadiums have done, they had all the women to one side and all the men to the other. But you couldn't tell this while approaching, so a lot of people got very near the front of the lines and then had to shuffle sideways quite a ways.

I didn't get a photo of the outside of the stadium, but I did get one of the full moon over the crowd

I had no trouble finding my seat. It was as close as yesterday's was far away. This one was in the fifth row, at about what the US would call the 40-yard line. The way the space between the first row and the field was arranged, this felt much closer than the fifth-row seat at England v. Chile. 

Great seat

Even the refs need to warm up

National anthems

Most of the photos of the haka are very out of focus. This is the least-bad one

Japan got out to a lead, but Samoa closed to with 17-8 at halftime. A red card to Samoa's Ben Lam early in the second half meant that Japan would have a one-man advantage for the final 33 minutes of the match. That's hard to overcome, but Samoa scored two tries in the last fifteen minutes (66th and 78th minutes) to get to within 6, at 28-22. They then had some good possession in the last two minutes, but Japan got the ball just as time was expiring and kicked it out of bounds to end the match. That's a bonus point for Samoa for a loss by fewer than seven points. It might not be enough to get them into the top two in their pool (to advance to the quarterfinals) but if it gets them in the top three, it's an automatic qualification for the next World Cup.

A lineout close to me

 

A nearby scrum

Another nearby lineout

Body language tells the story

There was a couple in the row behind me dressed in kimonos. A roving cameraman took a liking to them and filmed [yeah, it's not really film, but I'm struggling to come up with appropriate wording] them celebrating after a Japan score. It was put up on the big screen and you could see the top of my head!

The kimono couple after the match

An approximation of what the big screen looked like after one of Japan's scores

The kimono guy was a big fan of the refs and got selfies with at least two of them. That's Ben O'Keeffe mostly upright, and Jaco Peyper hunched over

I took two plastic cups in to the refund tent for two euros each, then it was about fifteen minutes to walk to the Metro station and twenty more waiting in line. Back at the hotel an hour after the match ended. Not too bad. I think Toulouse does it about as well as any city.

...doug

Match 13 -- Uruguay v. Namibia

Wednesday, 27 September 2023

My 13th match, and the 25th of the tournament, was Uruguay v. Namibia in Lyon.

It was a 5:45 p.m. match, so it was light enough when I arrived to get a photo of the stadium

This was expected to be a close match. Both Uruguay and Namibia get beaten pretty regularly by the top tier nations, but against each other, they should both have a chance.

My seats were the third row from the top, in the corner.

Way up by the roof structure

 

Pre-match warmups

The national anthems

Namibia got out to an early lead, scoring a try in the first three minutes. They stayed in front for the first 54 minutes, leading by as much as 14. Was this going to be Namibia's first ever win at a World Cup? Perhaps not. Uruguay pulled ahead with a Santiago Arata try. That try, and the preceding one, happened while Namibia was short a player because of a yellow card in the 48th minute. 

But Namibia was still within seven points, trailing 26-23. Even if they don't come back to win, they can at least still get a bonus point out of it. (If a team loses by seven or fewer points, they get a bonus point in the pool standings.) Alas, Uruguay scored again in the 67th minute to make it a ten-point difference. Soon after, in the 69th minute, Namibia scored a penalty kick to bring it back to within seven! But five minutes later, Uruguay answered with a penalty kick of their own, denying Namibia the bonus point. The final score was 36-26. 

It wouldn't have been the first bonus point in World Cup competition for Namibia. They earned one in 2015 by losing to Georgia by a single point. But even so, they are such perennial underdogs that the crowd was really pulling for them.

Leaving the stadium had more bottlenecks than Sunday. Maybe because most people left promptly tonight, while on Sunday a lot of Welsh fans stuck around a while. The crowd control was good, but it still took an hour to get out of the stadium, onto the tram, and to the nearest Metro station. 

The section to my left had a lot of kids in it -- or maybe kid-like adults -- and they started throwing paper airplanes to see if they could make it all the way to the field. Several did, including one that got almost to the 22-meter line.

The "winning" paper airplane

...doug

Day 18 -- Lille to Lyon

Sunday, 24 September 2023

I walked to the train station for a 9:00 a.m. train to Lyon.

Some of the tracks leading into the Lille train stations

I arrived at the Lyon train station at about noon, which was again too early to check into my hotel. This was the fifth or sixth time I had been to the Lyon train station, but the first time leaving it on foot. The other times were all just train transfers. I walked to Philly Soul -- a "Street food Américaine" place. The cashier (seemed like the owner) was very friendly and enjoyed my French. The Philly sandwich was fantastic. It had the same basics as an American Philly, but it was French bread, and onion confit. 

A Philly from Philly Soul

I then kept walking to the hotel to see if I could leave my bag. Yep. The clerk was very nice, and let me try some French. He said the room was not yet ready, but he would check me in and let me put my bag in the luggage room. When he asked for ID, I showed my my driver license, but either it was unacceptable or he didn't recognize it (I mean, how would a guy in France know if a Nebraska driver license was legit?) and asked to see my passport instead. That's the first time my license wasn't enough. 

Expedia can't handle the French city taxes, so each time I check in to a hotel I need to pay a few euros in tax directly. This time it was about what I had in coins, so I counted them out and gave them to him. As he was putting them in the till, he stopped and gave one back, saying it didn't look right. I took a look and understood what he meant. It was the same diameter as a 10 cent piece, and the same color, and had a big "10" on it, but it was noticeably lighter weight. Looking closer I saw that it was a pre-euro French coin from the early 1980s. So I took it back and gave him a ten-cent piece instead. I have no idea where I got the old coin.

The Rhône and the Hotel Dieu (not my hotel)

I walked around the neighborhood and found the Rugby Village just a few blocks away. I hung around there for about an hour until it was check-in time. Got checked in to the hotel and rested a bit. It was a popular area for both Wales and Australia fans.

The view from my window

I then headed out to the Wales v. Australia match.

...doug

Day 17 -- Saint Etienne to Lille

Saturday, 23 September 2023

Not quite as early a morning as yesterday. I took the tram to the train station for a 9:00 a.m. train to Lille, via Lyon. I got to Lille a wee bit early to check in to the hotel, so I walked in the general direction of the hotel and looked for a place to get lunch. I saw the Thai street food place that I walked by a few times the last time I was in Lille, called "Thai Street Food by Tony". It reminded me of the conversation I had many years ago with my mother.

Me: Mom, what's that interior design place that cousin Toni works for?

Mom: The interior design firm.

Me: Yeah, what's the name?

Mom: It's the interior design firm.

Me: Yeah, that's what I'm asking. What's the name of it?

Mom: Toni works at The Interior Design Firm.

Me: Ugh. I don't think you are understanding my question. I want to know the name of the interior design firm that Toni works at.

Mom: I don't think you are understanding my answer. The name of the interior design firm that Toni works at is "The Interior Design Firm".

So now it's "Hey, what's the name of Tony's Thai street food place?" Umm, you mean "Thai Street Food by Tony"? 😀 

Anyway, Google told me that Thai Street Food by Tony was open. When I got there, there was a chalkboard in the door window [Hmmm, "door window"? That seems like an odd phrase, but I guess it's the best term.] saying something that I roughly translated as "Gone running. Back at 3:00." Maybe really running? Maybe running an errand? Either way, it was 3:10, so I'll have to try Tony's Thai street food next time. I checked into the hotel and saw that there was a Big Fernand near one of the Metro stops that lead to the stadium. The Big Fernand in Nice was one of the best burgers I've had in a long time, so I headed that way. Sorry Tony -- Fernand wins this time.

The clerk at Big Fernand enjoyed my attempts at French, but she was happy to switch to English. She said she had been practicing her English lately in anticipation of the World Cup, knowing that a lot of English speakers would be coming to town. Her practice was successful -- I could understand her quite clearly.

Another Bartholome burger and gargandine fries at Big Fernand

The Metro station was really close to Big Fernand so I just went right from there to the England v. Chile match. Then a Metro ride and a nice walk back to the hotel to end the day.

The Grand Plaza was lit up in World Cup colors

I'm not sure what kind of oak these are from, but they are the most elongated acorns I've ever seen. Probably quercus rober

...doug

Day 16 -- Marseille to Saint Etienne

Friday, 22 September 2023

Got up really early to get to the train station in time for a 7:30 a.m. train. Took the train to Lyon, then transferred to a train to Saint Etienne. Once in Saint Etienne, I took the tram to the stop near my hotel, even though check-in wasn't for a few more hours. While on the tram, I saw that it went right by the shop that I walked to from the train station my previous time in Saint Etienne (not written up yet) before I knew about the tram. 

Walked to the hotel and tried to ask about leaving my bag, in French. Apparently not very well, because the desk clerk had no idea what I was talking about. He spoke English, so we got it figured out. He wrote my name on a slip, attached it to the bag, and put it in a luggage room. Yay! That means I don't have to carry the backpack around for the next three-ish hours.

I took the tram to the Rugby Village and walked around there for a while. They had some inflatable games.

Let's strap kids to each other and have them run in opposite directions. What could go wrong?

 And they had the Webb Ellis Cup on display.

The Webb Ellis Cup

I had plenty of time, so I walked back toward the hotel instead of taking the tram.

Cathédrale Saint-Charles-Borromée de Saint-Étienne

On the way to the Rugby Village I had noticed a Pizza Cosy location right along the tram route. I had a great meal at the Pizza Cosy in Bordeaux on Day 6 and had been looking for other locations ever since. I stopped in and they told me they were closing soon for the afternoon but that I could get a pizza to go. (A lot of French restaurants close for a few hours in the afternoon. Typically between about 2:00 and about 5:00. My inconsistent schedule often has me hungry for lunch at 2:00, so this occasionally trips me up.) I got the Chaud-rizo pizza to go and took it across the street to a park. I ended up sitting on the same bench I sat on back on Day 3 when I had a pain chocolat and cold slice of pizza from a bakery before I knew of the goodness that is Pizza Cosy.

I forgot to get a "before" picture

The Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Étienne got all decorated for the World Cup

Then it was back to the hotel to get checked in and rest a bit before the Argentina v. Samoa match. The desk clerk -- different than the one when I dropped off my bag -- was very nice. She seemed to appreciate that I was trying French, but she switched to English. I got checked in, and she said "Oh, you're the one who dropped off your bag earlier. We've put it in your room for you."

When I got to the room, I didn't see the bag. I checked everywhere. (It's not a large room, so there aren't a lot of options.) I went back down to the desk and asked her to confirm that it was, indeed, put in the room. She called the housekeeper who had handled it as was told "Yes, it's in the closet". We went up to the room and double-checked (triple-checked at this point, I suppose) the closet. Nope, still not there. The clerk was starting to get nervous. She then had an idea. I could almost see the light bulb over her head. Let's check the next room over. ... Yep, there it was. In the closet of room 134 instead of 135.We were both quite relieved.

Then it was off to the Argentina v. Samoa match. Details here. Grabbed a taco at K&M tacos on the way back to the hotel. The cashier was awesome. He enjoyed my attempts to speak French. He reminds me of the guy we called "Cookie Monster" at Locos. High energy; doing everything at high speed; friendly, but a bit chaotic. He was making a pot of tea for himself and some regular customers and offered me some. I accepted, but he could tell I was hesitant, so he just gave me a small amount. I'm used to iced black tea, and this was neither. But it wasn't bad, and I drank it all. 

As I was eating I noticed a sign on the counter that I translated as "No bank cards under 15 euros". As I took my tray back to the counter after eating I told him, the best I could in French, that I hadn't seen the sign and I'm sorry that I paid with a card. I offered him a few euros to make up for his fees and he laughed and pushed it back at me. 

Raclette taco at K&M Tacos

Then back to the hotel for the night. It's a nice place -- Hotel du Midi -- right near the tram line. I'll likely stay there again the next time I'm in Saint Etienne.

 ...doug