Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Toulouse - 14th May

Today we went to the HSBC World Rugby Sevens finals day, that’s a 55 minute drive including the 130kph toll roads to the park'n'ride, then a train trip to Toulouse, then a bus trip to the stadium and finally an 800 metre walk. All up, 2 hours from Carcassonne; thanks to Roger’s planning, two English speaking people in Toulouse and lots of rugby fans on the bus for us to follow to the stadium.
We arrived just in time to see the Women’s semi-final of NZ v France. The crowd was very vocal until France started to lose. Toulouse is a small, but excellent, stadium so you can see the game pretty well from anywhere.

France does entertainment very, very well so there were lots of fan-participation moments both during the match and between matches. For the kids, or those that can’t sit too long on hard seats, there is a fan zone out the back with relaxing chairs, big screens, water slides, etc. Yes that is a crazy Frenchman on the zoom slide in a bikini.

There were lots of food outlets and drink stations; the most entertaining was the one that sold American styled hot dogs filled with Nutella, the three children near us had them, let’s just say their parents went through quite a few tissues and have a serious amount of washing to do.

You probably know by now the NZ women and men both won their respective finals and the women's overall series. The French lost in both semi finals to us but were gracious in defeat and supported NZ in the women’s final but Argentina in the men’s, along with the Mariachi band.
Unfortunately the skies opened up just as the medal ceremony started but the Kiwi teams ignored it for their fans. Sorry for the noise of the rain and quality of the video below, I wasn’t brave enough to leave the cover of the stand.

Cheese Experience No.23 - Mozzarella Burgers; Mozzarella isn’t a French cheese but when you are at the rugby and the food queues are awfully long you go for the shortest and fastest. The Italian Burger outlet moved remarkably fast as they had an efficient chain going, also aided by the fact there were basically no options. The large white blob in the photo below is Mozzarella cheese; surprisingly the most prominent ingredient inside the bun considering it was marketed as a Poulet (Chicken) Burger. The Mozzarella doesn’t taste like we get in NZ; it was more of a ricotta texture.

For those more interested in a drink than food, a jug of beer cost €17, about NZ$31, you get €1.50 back for returning the plastic jug. Roger got a beer in a cup and would've got 50cents back for recycling the cup, but we kept it as a souvenir. The burger and chips combo was about NZ$22 each, with free ketchup, mayo and mustard.

Essence of France Photo Challenge No.9 - La Marseillaise The French love to sing at the rugby just like the English and Welsh, however instead of adopting a song like Sweet Caroline they sing a shorten version of La Marseillaise, their National Anthem, minus the not so nice words. The video below is just a small portion of it.