Day 21 -- Lyon

Wednesday, 27 September 2023

I got up and walked over the the Parc de la Tete d'Or for the bench unveiling. Ummm, it's a huge park -- 290 acres -- and I hadn't asked the New Zealand guys where in the park the ceremony would be. I still had 20+ minutes to spare, so I tried to figure out how best to cover enough of the park in that time that I'd find it. I ended up finding some kids playing rugby -- maybe some sort of outreach program. Ahhh, I'm probably getting warmer. I then saw a tour bus and some temporary fencing with bunting. Warmer. And then I found the sign.

I didn't need Google Translate to tell me that I was in the right place 

I sent Justin a screenshot of Google Maps with a blue dot where I was to save him the trouble of searching.

The guys told us 10:30 a.m., but nothing was starting. I would guess that 10:30 is when they were told to be there, so they just passed that along to us. 

The grounds before anything got started. Nobody was going in, so I figured maybe you needed tickets and decided I'd just watch from outside

They ended up letting the public through the arch once all the dignitaries were seated. It all got started at about 11:00, which is good for Justin because he had some sort of technical difficulty with his alarm and didn't get there until a bit after 11. 

The head of the New Zealand Rugby Union spoke for a bit, as did someone else from the All Blacks (Operations Manager, perhaps?), followed by the mayor of Lyon. The organizers did a great job of having interpreters in both directions.

Grégory Doucet -- the Mayor of Lyon, white circle -- and Max Spence -- the President of the All Blacks, black circle

This dog's got it figured out

The bench

The plaque

The head of the cultural center (left) and the carver (center)

Justin got there in time for the milling about. There were a number of former All Blacks in attendance, including at least George Bower (current, but injured), Dan Carter, and Andy Ellis. Justin got photos with most of them, and we both got a photo with George.[I'm sure Justin will send it to me eventually. 😊 ]

Justin found an episode of a New Zealand Rugby documentary that includes this event in the first four minutes or so. You have to create an account to watch it, but it's free.

I spent the afternoon resting, and the evening brought the Uruguay v. Namibia match.

For a moment I thought this might be a muumuu museum

Slides to get from the upper sidewalk to the river walk below