All Blacks in Paris

My sister, Sah, arrived in London on Thursday (yay!) - the day before 6 of us headed off to watch the All Blacks play the Blues in Paris. Running (always late!) to get onto the Eurostar after work on Friday night, we randomly bumped into various New Zealand friends from different times in our NZ life - high school, University and work friends which was unexpected but pretty cool and perhaps not all that unusual given that the entire train was packed with kiwis. We were staying in the centre of Paris and after arriving late, and the last of our group flying in from Ireland, we ventured out to have just one drink at the local bar. It turns out that the local is a rugby bar and being the only kiwis amongst a ton of Frenchies, the bar owner shouted us a bottle of champagne, introduced us to the 1987 captain of the French rugby team and our early night went out the window. Another five bottles of french champagne on the house (can you believe it?!) and a bar full of Frenchies singing the French national anthem, we were cajoled into returning the favour and very patriotically sang ours. A few mussels and some fries and mayo and our first, and very memorable night in Paris, was done. We spent Saturday wandering the city - had lunch on the Seine, saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Place de la Concorde, the Louvre and the many other sights of Paris. The game on Saturday night was at the Stade de France which was awesome - it is huge and all of the seats in the stadium give a great view of the field. We were seated in the middle of a huge number of French supporters and everyone was upbeat and loud in their support of the French team. Not so when the ABs worked their usual magic and kicked some French ass. Our raucous bar from Friday night was far more sedate and there were a number of other kiwis there so the night was a completely different scene. We wandered Paris some more on Sunday, had breakfast on the Champs d'Elysses and spent the afternoon in the Latin Quarter which has a heaps of bakeries and little seafood and pasta restaurants - gorgeous.