CHAMBORD TO PARIS

Saturday 13 October 2007

Having travelled from Chambord to Paris just in time to hit the peak hour traffic(!!) the McRent Resemobil arrived at “Camping du Bois De Boulogne situated on the right bank of the Seine just above the Pont du Suresnes and about 12 kilometres from the centre of the city. By the time we arrived, the place (which has over 500 camping sites or “pitches”) was overrun with English, South African, New Zealand and Australian rugby supporters. In some respects the “camping” looked like a rehab centre for depressed Australasians. By contrast, and for obvious reasons, the Poms and the Yappies were in high spirits. We spent the early part of the day walking around Suresnes trying to but a 5 day pass for the Metro/RER/SNCF. I suppose that we should have anticipated that the local Tourist office, which sells the passes, would be closed on a Saturday! Set off about 6.00pm for Stade de France. After taking the bus from the camping to the Metro station at Porte Maillot we discovered that the ticket machine at the station was broken! A hastily handwritten note directed us to walk to the next Metro station in order to buy a ticket so that we could walk back to the first station to take the line to Stade de France. Did that! (In fact managed to buy a 5 day pass). By the time we finally got on the Metro the cars were as full as a fat girl’s sock and the Prop and his wife got in some much needed scrummaging practice fending off some very large South Africans who had no apparent ability to recognise that our carriage had reached its maximum capacity about three stops before they crow-barred their way on! However, this was only to be the beginning of an evening of sublime disorganisation. Upon arrival at Stade de France we discovered that there was no discernible system in place for the orderly movement of pedestrian and/or vehicular traffic. We had arrived at the North end of the stadium and were seated at the southern end. Whether by accident or design (the Prop suspects the latter) it seemed that everyone with tickets at the northern end of the ground had arrived at the southern end. As a result, it took about 40 minutes of jostling and the odd well-formed maul for us to make our way to our seats. Managed to sit down about 10 minutes before kick-off having spent three hours making the 12 kilometre journey. The Prop is convinced that chaos on this scale does not just happen – it must take months of careful planning by the French authorities. The less said about the match between England and France the better! Apart from the closeness of the scores throughout, it was a dull affair in which the Poms scored an opportunistic (though well taken) try in the fist minute before settling down to their usual dour 10-man game. Unaccountably, the French (like the Australians a week before them) evidently tried to take England on at their own game rather than playing to their strengths in the backs. “Les Bleus” showed promise and flair in patches and threatened to score the winning try in the dying moments but failed to do so much to the chagrin of their wildly enthusiastic supporters (who included anyone who was not an Englishman). The Prop has not had time to check the statistics, but is pretty sure that they will reveal that there have been less tries scored at the World Cup than at any before it. This, it may be supposed, is the result of teams like Australia & New Zealand (and to a lesser extent, France) not playing to win but rather, playing not to lose. The irony is of course that in abandoning their more accustomed enterprising style of play in favour of a “safe” game, they have achieved the very opposite of what was intended! Getting out of Stade de France was even more difficult than getting in!!! Again we had to force our way back to the northern end of the ground to get to the Metro. We had anticipated a similar sort if “sardine debacle” on the way back but, astonishingly, some idiot had posted men at the Metro to allocate passengers to carriages in an orderly fashion AND had put on extra trains so that the journey back to Porte Maillot was uneventful, if a little depressing with carriages full of dejected Frenchmen.

Sunday 14 October

Almost as if to mock the misfortune of the French the previous night, the day dawned with a cloudless blue sky. The Prop and his wife decided to go and have a look at the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t as though we didn’t know what it looked like, but is was a lovely day and, we thought, people will laugh at us if we say we went to Paris and didn’t see the Eiffel Tower. It turns out that we weren’t the only two people in France who had much the same idea that day! On a whim we decided to take a cruise up the Seine from near the Eiffel Tower. It was sensational! The clear warm autumn afternoon light set the stunning architecture along the riverbank aglow. So too the thousands of Parisiennes (some clothed, some not) who hemmed the left bank to take advantage of what was probably the last warm Sunday afternoon before winter. Somehow even paying €28 (about A$40.00) for two pretty ordinary ham and cheese rolls and two cups of coffee didn’t seem to matter in the least! Repaired to the McRent Reisemobil at about 7.00pm to watch the second semi-final between South Africa and Argentina. It was always going to be a tall order for the Argentinians to overcome the ‘Boks (although Fiji had come pretty close the week before) and so it was. Argentina stayed in the match until about the final 10 minutes before South Africa (again) scored a couple of late tries to make the victory appear much more comfortable than it really was. So now the finalists are decided – England and South Africa! This is unlikely to be a sparkling or memorable encounter.