Aljice en France 2016: Day 39 - Portugal Win Euro 2016

Back to Anna's

It was a relief to leave "Central Hotel" with its scary showers. Honestly, someone will get killed coming out of there one day. It's not really a good idea to put a shower on a stair case at the best of times, but add to that the extra components of it being dark, steep and windy and the door opens right out onto the stair case - dangerous! I got packed, got rid of some clothes, including my tatty England shirt (which I did feel bad about.)

Bye bye Central Hotel. Never to return.

Then, first on the agenda was getting back to Anna's to drop my bag off. The metro system in Paris is excellent and within half an hour I was at Anna's. I didn't spend long there, and really just said goodbye to Felicity and "see ya" to Anna.

My plan, at this stage, was to try to get into the fanpark, have my iconic selfie by the Eiffel Tower and then meet Anna and Ahmed at Opera, where there is always good atmosphere for big matches.

Tour of Tour Eiffel

You could spend a lifetime in Paris and still not see it all, so with just a few hours, it's tricky to prioritise. I decided on the Eiffel tower first, as that is where the Paris Fanzone is. I got off the metro at the Champs Elysees and walked over a majestic bridge towards the tower before stopping for a coffee.

I love the fruit shops in Paris

Fanzone right by Eiffel Tower

Coffee stop

Magnificent to see that at the end of the street

A couple next to me must have got up from their seats three times in half an hour to go outside for a smoke. It's incredible to me how nicotine-addicted the French seem to be.

TABAC, TABAC everywhere

As I turned the corner from the cafe I got that fantastic sight of a French street with the Eiffel tower behind it. As I walked closer, there were more and more people, mainly football fans getting excited about the fast approaching final, milling about. As the fanpark didn't open until 4pm I decided not to bother going in and just strolled around under the tower itself before deciding on a plan.

What to do next?

Musee de l'homme

A quick consultation on Google maps gave me my next plan. The Human Evolution museum in Paris used to be famous because it showed the original fossils of Lucy for a few years and as it was many years since I last visited and as it was just over the bridge across from the Eiffel tower, that was the obvious next destination. Also, I found that there was a brewpub just a few hundred meters the other side, so that sealed the idea.

Eiffel Tower - Musee de l'homme and then The Frog Brewpub - Parfait!

The museum seemed to have changed completely since my last visit. I loved the section on human languages. My only criticism was that is was presented geographically, with a very small sample of languages, instead of grouping them into families, which I think is the best way to get your head around them. Still pulling a tongue out of the wall to hear a substantial sample of speech of a language was a humorous way of doing it.

I liked the video showing the importance of DNA. It had hundreds of people swimming in formation to join up into the famous double helix shape.

The other item of particular interest to me was the (presumably) life size reproduction of the Laetoli footprints. I couldn't resist taking my shoes and socks off and stepping into one of the footprints. As expected, they were huge, compared to the human foot. Australopithecus the likely hominin that made the prints, was tiny but apparently had very big feet, even compared to our's.

So many tongues

Amazing "smell dispenser"

Man Museum

View of Eiffel Tower from the museum

The Frog and Andy Murray is Men's Wimbledon Champion

Brewpubs are still quite rare but they're always good when you find one. It's even better when you find one close to where you already are. So it was a no brainer to head there next, just a few hundred meters away from the Trocadero.

The bar looked great and was full of people, again many football fans, who were watching the men's Wimbledon final. Blimey. I'd forgotten about that. Luckily the match hadn't been on for long and the second set had just started, Murray winning the first. So I parked myself at the bar, with a tely right in front of me and settled in for a couple of hours of drinking nice beer and watching sport. Bliss!

The Frog Brewpub

Great to watch the Wimbledon Final here - Two poor guys behind the bar worked to death

The bar was packed and got progressively more so as the match progressed. Despite this, there were just two bar staff having to handle all the requests being thrown at them.

The beers were really good and so was the tennis. Murray was continually challenged by the Canadian Milos Raonic, but always seemed to have another gear to switch up to and ended up winning in straight sets.

Poor Andy found it a bit much emotionally and openly sobbed after winning.

Andy Murray emotional after winning Wimbledon

Great to see a British sporting success

As he lifted the famous golden trophy, I downed my last beer and set off.

Where to next?

Parc de France on a Whim

The final was fast approaching and I still didn't really know where I would be watching it. I'd pretty much knocked my original idea on its head. I really didn't fancy going back to the fanzone and standing in the sun for another few hours drinking Carlsberg but I still didn't know where I'd go. The idea of joining Anna and Ahmed at Opera was the default plan.

David Watson had been quite adamant the night before that I really should try to go to the match. He is much more experienced in these matters and showed me that on Twitter people were still trying to sell tickets at face value - a sign that it was a buyer's market.

He made the point that the French are not really as fanatical about football as the English and that in 1998 he managed to buy tickets for him and a couple of friends for the World Cup final versus Brazil just before the match.

His argument was that I'd already spent a lot of money on this trip. Here I was, in Paris, on the day of the final. Why not see what was available? It was a compelling argument, so I set off for St Dennis again, almost reluctantly.

I honestly didn't really think it was worth going but I went anyway, I convinced myself it would be good just to see what the stadium might look like on Final day. It was about 6:30 pm as I came out of the metro station and I must admit it felt a little flat, for such a big final. At about this time, I received a text from David who was already at the ground with Graeme. Basically, he told me that there were definitely tickets for sale and the prices were very good.

Stade de France on Cup Final Day

As I walked towards the stadium, I noticed a little boy holding a card reading "tickets for sale" shouting "half price!" Blimey, David was right. There really were tickets available. The trouble is, the prices for finals tickets is very high, even if you pay face value. Category 1 (the highest) tickets are in the 900 Euros range but the cheapest are around 100. I decided that I'd be prepared to pay around 250 so all I had to do was to get some cash out from an ATM.

"All"?

This in itself proved to be a major challenge. First of all Google showed that there were no banks on my side of the stadium and as many of the streets were blocked off it took half an hour to get around to the other side. Then, as I got closer, I found that most of them were either closed for security reasons or else had run out of cash. Time was ticking and I began to think that this was going to be one of those ironies - tickets going cheap but I couldn't get the cash. Why didn't I have more faith in David's advice and get the cash out earlier?

Finally found a cash point with cash

Eventually, I did finally find an ATM that had money and so I set off back to the stadium with just about an hour to go. I walked past a few people selling tickets but they asked too much. An Asian girl wanted 300 euros for a category 2 and a German fan wanted 400 euros for similar. He looked a bit smug when I said it was too much, but I'd offer him 200. As I got closer to the stadium I sensed that some sellers seemed a bit less self assured. One woman wanted 300 euros for her category 3 ticket and I was trying to knock her down to 200 when I was approached by a shady-looking guy offering a "much better seat - look it's category 1, that one is no good". He wanted 400 euros. I said I only have 200.

He looked a little hesitant.

"300" he offered, obviously not believing me.

"Ok, how about 250? That's all I have. This time I was being truthful.

He looked at his equally dodgy-looking friend, who nodded and the deal was done with a cheeky smile on his face.

The face value of this ticket was 895 euros, and I'd just paid 250. Could this be right? I still didn't believe it. As I walked towards the ground I started to feel a bit sick, thinking I'd been sold a forgery or something. I looked at it again and it looked perfectly fine, but what did I know?

Anyway, I got through one ring of security where they check and mark your ticket and then through towards my gate, U, which is where I was for the France v Iceland quarter final. As I approached the final barcode reading gate, I was still half-expecting it to reject my ticket but No!, it let me through!

I was in!

895 euro ticket for 250

European Championship Final. Thanks David Watson!

I took my seat, which was very close to the one I had for the quarter final and watched the very impressive Final Ceremony.

At this point it still hadn't really sunk in that I was about to watch the final but my excitement started to rise as the teams came out and I was totally up for it after the vast crowd sang the marseillaise.

Amazing closing Ceremony

Still can't believe I'm in

10,000 Portuguese

The Teams

France 0 Portugal 1

I thought it was a great final, even if the reports I've read since don't seem to agree. France flew at Portugal from the start and it seemed that the result everyone expected would happen.

Then, Payet clattered into Cristiano Ronaldo after about 10 minutes and when Ronaldo rolled around like a three year old seeking attention I, like everyone else, thought he was "simulating". Sure enough he got up and having had to go off to seek attention, came back on. But a few minutes later he went down again. When the guy to my left, from the Reunion islands, said "he's done for" I didn't believe him. I thought it was just more theatrics. But sure enough, Ronaldo was off and was replaced with Quaresma, a decent player, but (forgive me) certainly less quaresmatic.

Ronaldo injured by Payet, has to go off

Surely, France would win now.

Portugal, however, somehow seemed to be lifted by the exit of their famous star and came back into the game and threatened a few times themselves before the break.

At half time I noticed, a few seats to my right were two English guys, one of which was taking notes. I asked him "do you always do that?" He pointed to his shirt, with its "PFA" logo and said "we work for the PFA (Professional Footballers Association)" so I went down to chat to him, and his colleague.

Apparently the PFA had many scouts working at the Euros, looking at players and tactics to help them in their coaching programs. We discussed how the finals had been generally good and close, even if there was a lack of goals.

"What did you think of England?" was my obvious question.

"They just froze in the second half" was their reply.

PFA Scouts

As the second half started I soon learned that the big man sat next to me on my right was also a football big wig. "I am president of the Nigerian Football Association" he said. The very attractive woman he was sat next to gave me a clue he was somebody special and throughout the second half he impressed me with his knowledge. When Payet was replaced with Coman he said "that was the wrong substitution" and as the second half escalated into a brilliant end to end battle, he said "I think Portugal will win".

President of the Nigerian Football Association!

The game remained goalless and went into extra time. Bonus. When Griezmann his the post, my Nigerian friend said "Now Portugal will win. Nothing more certain." I was not so sure, thinking it was now likely to go to a penalty shoot out, but he was proved right when substitute Eder scored a brilliant winner with just minutes remaining.

There were great scenes of joy (from the Portuguese) and sadness (from the French) afterwards and it was an amazing privilege to witness it all.