What a Week! (Part 1)

With the games continuing, a necessary trip to London to renew our visas, a long-planned work retreat, and a friend visiting for the Olympics, we knew we were in for a busy week.  Now, with all of that in the rearview mirror, feet firmly planted back on French soil, and some leisure time this weekend, I am looking forward to recalling all of the fun.

On Monday, we had tickets to see table tennis.  Unlike archery, which we saw last weekend, table tennis is a sport with which I have a long history.  Thousands and thousands of hours of my childhood were spent in one of various neighborhood basements at the end of a ping pong table, perfecting my latest serving technique, working on the most outrageous spin backhands, or in cutthroat competition with my best friend Jamie.  (I don't, by the way, think that we were ever very good---we certainly never received any formal instruction, which might have gone a long way---but we did love and do it all of the time.)  I was, therefore, super excited about seeing some world-class competition, and Olympics table tennis did not disappoint.  We ended up getting tickets to mixed doubles, and saw semifinals involving North Korea, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong.  

Like tennis, the etiquette dictates that the crowd stay quiet during the points.  Unlike tennis, the breaks in between points and games were sometimes filled with light displays, loud music, and raucous cheering.  Even though it was a pretty big venue, I felt like we were able to follow the play reasonably well.  I expected that the pace would be fast and the shots impressive, but some of the points were downright unbelievable, with players standing several feet from the table, taking huge swings, and making amazing gets.  

It was tremendous fun---I would definitely recommend it as a spectator sport.  Here are a few images.  Note, in particular, some of the fans sitting in front of us, who seemed to be fellow athletes cheering on their countrymen and -women.  (We see a lot of athletes around Paris now.)  

The fun continued the next day, when we had tickets to men's basketball.  We purchased most of our Olympics tickets months in advance, having no idea who might be competing, so we were excited when we found out that we would see the French men's basketball team.  Not only would we get to experience French fans cheering on their team, but the team would be a very impressive one, with NBA stars Fournier, Gobert, and Wembenyama.  The group stage basketball games were being played in Lille, an hour north of Paris on the TGV, and neither of us had been before.  So we booked our train tickets to allow a few hours before the early evening game to explore Lille.

We arrived in time for lunch and found a wine bar on a quiet street in the old city.  The weather was perfect, so we chose an outdoor table to enjoy a leisurely lunch.  Lille was beautiful, and we were interested in exploring more after lunch, but our timing was not great.  It seemed that most of the sights and museums of greatest interest were either closed on Tuesday or too far out of the center of town for us to reasonably visit by the time we had finished our late-ish lunch.  We ended up walking around the old city and killing time for a couple of hours, not a terrible use of part of an afternoon. 

And here is a photo of Glenn (not Victor Wembenyama) outside of the cathedral in Lille.

The game itself was great fun, with some flashes of brilliance from the French team and some great hustle and tenacity from the Japanese (as well as some sloppy play and missed opportunities from both).  The crowd was electric.  I realized that the best French basketball players don't usually play in France since they are in the NBA, so this was a rare opportunity for French fans to see their superstars in person.  France beat Japan in a nail-biter.

We arrived back late on Tuesday night, woke up on Wednesday morning, and packed for London, where we would go later that afternoon.  (And somehow I managed to shoehorn the work retreat in before we left.)  

I'll stop here to avoid a too-long post, but I'll pick up at the point of our short trip to London in the next installment.