Paris Days 3 and 4

The REAL Notre Dame, and THB cannot, definitely cannot, see it from his hotel room (shout out to PT and BP who took this pic just a few days before THB and KM arrived). Is that scum floating on the river's surface?

 Day 3, Paris, Monday, July 29

Breaking News: Actually, it is Day 2 news. After scouting how long it would take to get from VB to T&F, THB and KM realized we could not get from one to the other without either leaving VB early or missing the beginning of T&F. So we posted the VB tix on the Paris O's app, the only place to resell tix. Done and sold. The organizers take 5% of the face value from the seller and add 10% of the base price to the buyer. There very own Stubhub. No negotiating, the price is always set at the face value. From watching TV, it appears that all the seats have tushies in them. Of course, on TV they are often showing French athletes and teams. We have one more set of tix at the resale site; that VB session is a quarterfinal and the teams playing that match will be known at the end of the round-robin now in process. When the contestants are known, we think the tix will sell quickly. Plan B is to pull them back and post them individually as right now they are on sale as a  pair. 

Today: THB and KM head to THB's fave boulangerie on the Rue de Turenne, Tout Autour de Pain. Yunn-eeee! A quick rest and off to the nearby Pompidou for art and an excellent lunch at the  rooftop restaurant, Georges. It was growing hotter and we repaired to our a/c  blessed rooms. During lunch (in the suite) we agreed to add the first of our extra sessions and bought tix on the resale app for an early morning session of two handball matches tomorrow. The easily fit into our free day. Great adapting based after seeing what was going on locally.

Before heading out for VB (now THB is getting confused, what day is it?), THB watched a real rarity: the Joker was playing Rafa in the second round- it is doubtful they have met this early since they were teenagers. Rafa did not survive.

The volleyball match was a first round match which just lucked out to be Women's USA vs China. The way the points in the round robin are assigned: 2 points for winning, 1 point for loser if a game 5, 0 points for loser if no game 5 (winner closes out match winning 3 games)

This match: the first four games were split (first to 25, must win by 2). The decider is to 15 and China won 15-13. THRILLING!! 

In the prior O's that fans attended, one ticket got you two matches. 2024 it gets you one match and this match was so good, it was well worth paying for only one.

Light dinner in the room, time to get some sleep.

Le Tout Autour de Pain

How to wash sidewalks without having to put up No Parking signs!

Pompidou Museum

Children's furniture was special exhibit

Duchamp was in permanent collection and not in special exhibit

Gabriel Giandelli 

Christian Schad

Donald Judd (not many American artists on display)

early Serra

Gerhard Richter 

Georges on rooftop of Pompidou: rigatoni, tuna tartare with mango, melon, two soft drinks, bottle of water, and a pavlova for dessert, $1135 (ed. note: THB neither proofreads nor types very well), $135

everything excellent

and one dish was over-the-top great

Rafa not ready to take on Joker

Best buy: a metro card for the week, gets you  anywhere you want to go including the train to O Stadium, and you only have to tap in, no tapping out (at least during the O's) so all entries are same price

VB venue, in one of the pavilions that makes up Paris Expo

Huge open area before getting to seats, this space has been redesigned for what is normally a convention site

view from our seats; sight lines were very good, the seats themselves were little plastic tubs, hard and close to the adjacent seats. Arena held 15K fans

with all the lights on

score with only a few points left in the match

 Day 4, Paris, Tuesday July 30

Dept of Transportation: THB and KM did 17K steps on Day 3 (each, not combined). No wonder we were so exhausted.

Both got an excellent night's sleep except we had a 9am Women's Team Handball session (two matches) now on our schedule. We allowed a bit less time to get to the venue (and added that the sleep amount). Team Handball is in same complex as VB, so metro is the same, just turn right for Handball and left for VB when exiting. There was no queue to enter, and almost none at the concessions stands, so THB did his shopping: 2 t-shirts and an Olympic pin, $77

THB and KM love handball, we have been to sessions at our last 3 O's together. While we had no rooting interest, and neither match was particularly close, we had a great time. And the between matches time was highly entertaining (almost an oxymoron for the O's, which are uniformly miserable to watch). 

Now back to the game: this is soccer, er, football, played on a wide rectangle kind of the size of a basketball court, 6' high and maybe 9' wide (aha, 2m x 3m) net at each end, no defender but the goalie allowed more than one foot inside the 10 meter semi-circle, and attacking players can jump into  the protected zone before shooting at the net before landing. The player with the small-ish ball has to dribble after a few steps are taken. So, not played against a wall or inside a boxed in court with a hard, small ball...not that type of handball.

the rings outside Handball venue

the line waiting to take selfies with rings in background

the Handball pavilion

entertainment

Germany romped over Slovenia, then Norway squeezed the life out of Korea

Phryge the O Mascot, pronounced Fire-Gay????

THB gets to see his dinner being made, priceless

You don't want the cream on top? Sorry, THB is cutting back

Observations: 

• There are a ton of Europeans (Britain having exited a number of years ago) and they share similar experiences in music, cheers, and even a common language (English). That means that at the urging of the venue announcers (most don't understand the French is THB's guess, they wait for the American English translation), everybody takes part, singing along (even when the songs are in English), waves their hands, etc., all in synch.
  
• There was a world-wide ticket lottery, not by region or country. It is hard to tell how many fellow-country people got tickets as they are no longer sitting next to them. It also means blocks of people from the same country are not sitting together. It definitely takes away some  of the outrageous nationalism...except for the hosts, who are pretty tame compared to other countries.
• In VB, there are no more line judges with little flags to indicate in or out, it is up to ref to make the call. The coach can challenge a touch/no touch call. 
• There are no electronic aids to determining whether a tennis referee can undo a mistaken call (THB was watching during the Coco kerfuffle)