Episode 26: When the Olympics Come to Your City

The EXCITEMENT! The ENERGY! The Olympics! In this episode Chandra shares what it was like to go to two different Paris 2024 Olympic events, along with insider tips of what to do and what not to before and after the games. Plus, Chandra shares about the surprise celebrity sighting she experienced during the games!

And of course there had to be a delicious Paris-based "Chan Select" to go along with all of this entertaining content. This episode is fun and full of stories! Listen in...

• This episode's "Chan Select": La Citrouille
• Follow us on Instagram: @expatriotical
• Episode Reference: Episode 3: Traveling Tastefully for Less

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Transcript

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for almost 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures (and experiences) without losing your own.

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!

Hi everyone! I have been SO excited to do this episode! As I mentioned last week, I will be sharing a little bit of Olympic Coverage with you in this episode and possibly in another to come! Last week as I wrote about our Home Leave Trip, I was literally driving down from Paris to Lyon, France to see an Olympic soccer (or football for all my other listeners that don’t use that very American term) game.

Well, I wasn’t driving, my husband, Chris, was, but regardless we were headed to Lyon to watch what was originally going to be the only event we would see (I’ll expand on that later), because the prices for tickets for other events that we had wanted to see like gymnastics and athletics (track and field) were running like 600 euro a piece and with 6 of us, that was just not feasible, but we were able to get these tickets for a total of like 172 euro and so we thought that would also give us a great excuse to see another city we hadn’t been to in France.

So on Friday, the 26th, as the city geared up for the opening ceremonies, we left and headed south to Lyon. It’s a 4 ½ hour drive to Lyon from Paris and we could have taken a train, but Chris says that we had looked earlier in the year and the prices were really high so we chose to drive. This also worked out because right around the start of the games an arsonist had set fire to the electrical lines of some of the major train lines causing massive delays and cancellations and while the line from Paris to Lyon was the only one apparently, not affected it was nice having the peace of mind of driving this time. Though I must say I do really love riding the train.

Anyway, we left around 12:45 in the afternoon and didn’t arrive at our hotel until closer to 6:00 in the evening. We chose to stay at the Moxy Hotel by the airport, because another way that we saved money was by booking our hotel with points, and that was the least expensive hotel we could find, since we already have to book 2 rooms for our family of six. (You can find more travel tips like this by listening to Episode 3: Traveling Tastefully For Less).

But this hotel was really nice and you didn’t feel like you were at the airport, so we enjoyed a nice dinner there and then retired to our room to watch most of (we had to turn the channel in parts) the Opening Ceremonies as a family. The next morning we enjoyed a yummy breakfast at the hotel and then headed into the center of Lyon on the Rhone Express, named after one of the major rivers that courses through Lyon.

I will say that if we had chosen to take a train or fly into Lyon, rather than drive, the Moxy Hotel would have still been a great and easily accessible location because it is so well connected to the city. Anyway, our kids were all free for riding the Rhone Express, so though the tickets were a bit pricey, at over 16 euro a piece one way , we only had to pay for two and would have most likely had to pay a pretty penny to park in the city center and would have had to deal with traffic, so it was well worth the 33 or 34 euro to take a quick 30 minute train ride into town.

If I am honest, we didn’t have big plans for Lyon past the soccer game. We had watched a Youtube video and it just seemed like a low key city overall. Chris had read that it is known for its culinary delights, so we knew we wanted to eat, but that was it. So once we arrived at the Gare (or train station in French) Par-Dieu Villette, I may not be saying that right, we walked over to Place Bellecour, as that was something else we had heard about. I’ll be honest that there really wasn’t much in the Place which is like saying plaza in English, but the neighborhood around it was cool.

And on the way over there we crossed over The Rhone River and admired its milky seafoam green glacial waters, which flow there all the way from the Alps. The water was beautiful and looked quite clean and would have, in my opinion, served as a great back up for the swimming of the triathlon for the Olympics, if they couldn’t get the water in the Seine cleaned up, which they didn’t,  but nobody asked me, so too little too late.

Anway, shortly after crossing the Rhone, we came to the neighborhood where Place Bellecour was. We wandered down a fun alley that was packed with restaurants, and ended up coming back and having a delicious lunch there, but before that we let our kiddos cool off by playing in a fountain that serves as a splash park for children, in front of a beautiful landmark called “Flower Tree”, which is simply a tree made of giant brightly colored metal flowers. Imagine a summer bouquet that stands about 30 feet tall or ten meters tall. It was unique and lovely.

After a delicious and quite filling lunch, due to time, we chose to take an Uber to Lyon Stadium and this was probably our one mistake, it ended up costing us way more, due to the very nice, but most likely slightly dishonest driver taking us a different and supposedly faster way, and then running into more traffic. Nonetheless, we made it there and with about 20 minutes to spare before the start of the game.

Ok, here is where I will share some insider tips, which may vary depending on the event you are seeing and which city you are in eventually, but for us in Lyon and in Paris, we did not arrive at the events at the time that they suggested. For the soccer game in Lyon, they suggested (they being whoever creates the emails and such for the Olympics) suggested that we get there 2 ½ hours early. Well the game was supposed to start at 3:00 in the afternoon or 15:00 and it was a hot day, so there was no way we were going to bake in the sun for that long before the game with children that were bored out of their minds. We honestly originally did hope to get there maybe an hour or so ahead of time, but due to lunch taking a good while and our Uber driver taking the long way there, we arrived 20 minutes early, which really wasn’t a problem.

We walked straight up to security, breezed in, got our tickets scanned, found our seats- even with going to the wrong stadium entrance, before the game commenced. I think that this was my favorite part of the experience. Yes, I enjoyed the game and the team we were cheering for (Argentina) won, but the surge of energy that hit me as I stepped out of the tunnel that is behind the seats into the sun and the sound of probably about 40,000 people cheering, was incredible. You could feel the excitement and the weight of anticipation! It was like it was floating in the air.

I was also honestly very surprised by the amount of people that were there. Chris had looked it up beforehand  that the Lyon Stadium, whose home soccer team is ironically named the Olympiques, (the Olympics without my terrible French accent) is about 60,000 people. I was expecting there to be maybe around 10,000 people max, as it was such a preliminary game, but man was I pleasantly surprised to see that my assumption was wrong. And on top of that, Messi, for those that are not familiar with soccer (no judgment here- because it is something that I am still very much a novice with) Lionel Messi or Lionel Messi is an Argentinian that plays for Inter Miami, David Beckham’s team. Messi wasn’t even playing that game and there were more people there supporting Iraq- the other team, than for Argentina anyway.

So for this being my first professional or international soccer game ever, I was super happy with my experience, minus my kids distracting me two times causing me to miss Argentina’s first two goals, but hey, that’s mom life I guess.

Anyway, the game was thrilling and even though we were hot we walked away happy, BUT we didn’t walk too far as we realized that it was going to take awhile for the  thousands of people to clear out of the area. So insider tip number two, stop and grab a drink or a bite to eat, if you can, instead fighting the crowds to leave. There was a restaurant around the corner from the stadium called Brut Butcher and we stopped in to grab a drink and then to cool off and ended up deciding to just eat dinner there before we caught the metro and then the Rhone Express back to the hotel. It was a lovely way to end the evening and by the time we left the restaurant the weather had cooled significantly and there was a nice breeze.

The next morning, after breakfast we headed back to Paris and started preparing for guests to arrive. These sweet guests were the reason that we all got to view another Olympic event, as they kindly gave us tickets to two different events.

For me and my daughter, Lilliah, this meant that we got to have a girls’ day and go to Beach Volleyball (for those that don’t know, which is probably most of you- volleyball is my favorite sport to play and has been, as long as I can remember). Anyway, as most of you know, the Stadium for Beach Volley was constructed on the Champs de Mars in front of the First Lady herself, no I don’t mean Brigitte Macron, wife of current French president, Emmanuel Macron (but we will talk more about him later). I am talking about the iconic Eiffel Tower!

You guys, seeing an Olympic game there, was absolutely phenomenal! I don’t think that I’ve ever shared with you all much about my experiences with the Eiffel Tower, the grandeur, the size and what it was like to go all the way to the top, and maybe one day I will, but today I simply want to share what she means to me personally. As many of you listening know and have experienced or are currently experiencing, life as an expat is not easy, that’s why I created Expatriotical. To let you know that you are not alone in your struggles, and there are others, a whole great big community, in fact, that has experienced many of the same trials you are enduring.

BUT there are also some really spectacular things as well, and for me, every time I am driving back from Costco, having had a great, but pretty “normal American” if you will, experience there. I round the bend of the highway and as I make my way down toward the Seine, there she is, the Eiffel Tower, standing in all of her glory. And she reminds me, “That’s right Chandra, you live in Paris.” Something I never thought, in a million years, I would do, since I was raised pretty much as a poor country bumpkin. So, she, the tower, is quite special to me.

Anyway, once again it was suggested that we arrive around an hour and a half before the game, but I consulted a friend of mine who had already been to a few events in Paris proper, if she thought this was necessary and she said no, so Lilliah, a couple of friends from church, and I arrived maybe 30-40 minutes early and once again, we were just fine.

A reason I think they wanted us to be early to this venue was because it was like a little village, and there were other activities you could do and also lots of places for you  to spend your money. From food kiosks to gift stores to at least one restaurant. And once again there was excitement in the air, maybe not as much or in the same way as in the Lyon Stadium, but everyone was a buzz!

We made our way to our seats and commenced in learning chants that they, the MC and DJ would play throughout all three games. We watched two mens games, the U.S. vs. Spain and France vs. The Netherlands and one women’s match which was Brazil vs. The Netherlands.

Though we cheered hard, the U.S. did not win and when we changed games our efforts went to cheering our host or current home country of France. This part was super cool! Obviously a large percentage of crowd participants were French, though notably the Netherlands had a good showing of support in their bright orange shirts!

But the French would chant “Allez les Bleus!” which means “Go Blue!” The name given to all French sports teams and the stadium would roar with this chant “Allez les Bleus! Allez les Bleus!” It was great!

Midway into the second set or match of that game I looked to my left and saw at about mid court (I was at the end of one side of the court) several men in dark blue suits moving around trying to secure a perimeter, let’s say. It reminded me of the Secret Service and I thought, “Hmm, someone famous or quote unquote important, must be sitting over there.” So I started watching and realized who it was, Emmanuel Macron had just sat down about 75 meters away from us. I told my friend from church who I thought it was and she agreed, that yes, she thought it was him.

They never flashed his photo on the big screen, probably for security reasons, but when the French MC saw him, he got crowd to start singing the French National Anthem. It was pretty cool, I will admit. But Macron’s presence and the crowd singing the anthem did not rally the French team enough and they lost in two games.

Finally, it was the women’s match, and as I had figured, and I’m not trying to sound sexist, they saved the best for last. What a game! The hustle… the diving for balls… the amazing volleys back and forth over the net… it was fantastic! The Netherlands fought hard and won the first set, then it was neck and neck going well beyond match or game point in the next match, but Brazil came out on top and in the final set we saw more of the same with Brazil finally claiming victory at the end! SO MUCH FUN and truly incredible!

The excitement and the energy of the crowd helped to make the intense heat and often breezeless moments more bearable, but my favorite moment came towards the end when everyone was encouraged to wave their country’s flag, regardless of if your team was playing and a song, which I am unfortunately not familiar with, played and everyone sang together. It was a beautiful moment of unity and I smiled as a sudden breeze lifted the American flag that Lilliah was waving and it almost glistened in the afternoon light as it waved in the wind among its fellow flags. Truly amazing.

For me and also for Lilliah, it was our last Olympic game experience, but two days later, Chris took all 3 of our boys to watch handball and they had a blast! Though I will say, our late night schedule this summer caught up to our two youngest and the noise of the crowd lulled them to sleep for a bit during the second match, but they all came home all smiles!

The Olympics! What an incredible experience! Can you tell I had a good time? I’ve used the word incredible probably ten times now. I grew up watching the Olympics on television, admiring the athletes and wondering if I could ever be a gymnast, which was definitely not going to happen for this 5’ 8” moderately talented, not very amazingly talented athlete, who never took a day of gymnastics class in her life. But t hat’s ok! Very few get the experience to participate in the Olympics, but I tell you, if you ever get the chance to attend, jump on it!  Especially if it’s in your city! It is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am so glad we went!

As the Olympics still have another 6 days of competitions as I write this, I hope to still experience other things, like going to see the Olympic Flame and maybe even bumping into an athlete or two, but for now, that is it for my Paris 2024 Olympic coverage.

Onto this episode’s “Chan Select”. This one definitely has to be Paris-based! We discovered it in June, when Chris’s parents and his sister, Sarah, her husband Nick, and their four kiddos were here visiting. Nestled in a cute little neighborhood, right off of Boulevard Saint Germain, or Saint Germain, near the Latin Quarter, is La Citrouille. I think that I’m saying that right, but I’m going to spell it for you “L-A space C-I-T-R-O-U-I-L-L-E”. Through the windows framed in Mediterranean blue, you can see stone walls and wooden beams that invite you to come in and get cozy. The staff was charming and not at all afraid of our crew of 14, including 8 children- ages 11 to 5. But beyond the ambiance and good service was the food. And if I dare say somyself, most notably the Beef Burgundy.

And the reason why it is most notable, is because that is not even what I ate! I believe I had a burger, but maybe I had fish, regardless I do remember that I really enjoyed it and ate it all, but why I forgot what I ate, is because I tried a little bit, literally a small taste of the sauce of Nick’s Beef Burgundy and my mind was blown!

Nick is a fellow foody and he was raving, and then Sarah tried some and she couldn’t stop talking about it either, so towards the end, I asked, probably looking like a starved puppy begging for food, if I could taste some of the jus or broth. And when those few drops hit my tongue it was a taste explosion! It was like I was tasting love and hours of slow roasting with tender care with a wine from a private vineyard being braised every so often over the meat as it cooked.

Now, that is probably not how it was cooked, but maybe that description helps you to imagine just how delicious it was! I will be sure to include the website for La Citrouille in the show notes so that you can add it to your itinerary if you are ever in Paris OR so that you can call and make a reservation if you are already here! Cause yeah, they speak English, it was great! And as always, I am not an affiliate of La Citrouille, just a great enthusiast!

Now to wrap up our episode today with a quote from, you guessed it, a former Olympian. This quote comes from Romanian gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, who was the first gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 and was also the winner of multiple gold, silver, and bronze medals in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics.

Nadia said, “Don’t run from a challenge. Instead run toward it because the way only to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.” I love this quote because it is so applicable to life in general and especially life as an expat. It can be sooo incredibly challenging and there are so many times when you can feel afraid, but facing those challenges, which many times we are forced to do, like it or not, is the best way to assuage our fears and keep going. Keep climbing. Keep thriving!

That’s it for today y’all. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Olympic episode and before I sign off, I have one favor to ask. If you haven’t done so recently,or if you haven’t done so ever, would you please share Expatriotical with a friend? That could look like copying a link from your listening app, whether that’s Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or whatever and sending it to them in a text. Or maybe even sharing that same link or an Instagram post from the Expatriotical page on your social media.

I would love to get the word out there about this little community and every single share helps and matters!  Thank you guys so much. I truly and deeply appreciate it!

I have had a blast recounting this past week’s experiences with you and I can’t wait to meet you back here again next week! It is a particularly special episode. Until then, this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical!