Thursday, September 15, 2005

The OL Accident

Last Tuesday there was a football game in Lyon. I'm not talking silly American football. I'm talking real, French football. It was quite an important game- OL (the Lyon team) versus Real Madrid, one of the best soccer clubs in the world. Everyone in town was in a tizzy about it. I was in a tizzy, too, but mostly because David Beckham plays for Real, and that meant that there was a possibility that a Spice Girl would be in Lyon. I considered cutting out of work to search for her, but ultimately wrote it off as not one of my best ideas ever.

Nonetheless, I was interested in seeing this game. After turning down an invitation to watch with Marc and his friends (I was worried about being ridiculed for my impressive lack of knowledge about OL), I set off with two friends to find a place to watch the match. None of us have televisions, which made this mission just that much more difficult. We decided our best bet was to head for Place Bellecour, where a giant screen had been constructed so that the general population of Lyon could watch the match and revel in public. We, however, had a problem. We were hungry. Before we could watch the game, we needed food. This, of course, led to a large spell of that wonderful activity beloved by students, meandering through Vieux Lyon. We stopped at a mini-grocery store to pick up cookies and kept going.

Finally, the three of us ended up at one of our favorite places- the Sol Cafe. How ironic that we wanted to eat at a Spanish restaurant the night Lyon was taking on Madrid. The prices weren't too bad, we sat down at a table in the cozy spot with red and yellow napkins. We drank red wine out of heavy glasses and I ate moules frites (mussels and french fries) seasoned with saffron that turned my fingers yellow. We sat and talked and ate, and before we knew it two hours had passed. Walking out of the restaurant, we discovered that we had missed the whole game. Whoops.

Instead of being sad, we walked home through Place Bellecour and saw the end of the reveling. We ate the previously-mentioned cookies and were happy. But, I couldn't tell you a thing about the match.

Oh, and OL won- 3-0.

1 Comments:

At 2:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

food is always better than football!

 

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