Onto Pau!!

Continuing our journey through the Dordogne, we stopped for lunch at Mentabo restaurant at Les Eyzies ~du~Tayac

After an hour stop and a tasty snack of cheddar cheese and some water for us and a Salad Nicoise for M & D we set off again. On route D begins to feel a shade peaky…Mon Dieu ! (like the French?) we seemed to be experiencing one of the group falling by the wayside. M volunteers to do the rest of the driving but D being a good old stalwart proclaims he can do it!

We notice 2 things….things seem rather quiet and …. there is rather a lot of bunting around the place

So on we go and ……………..after 11 long hours on the road we finally make it to Pau.

Tom Tom leads us directly to the door of the HotelRocevaux which is slap bang in the centre of Pau. We notice 2 things….things seem rather quiet and …. there is rather a lot of bunting around the place…of course Cup du Monde! It’s the world cup final evening…the big final match between France and Italy. Oh how exciting!!!..I can get my football out and bark “allez allez Thierry Henry!!” VaVa Voom!!!

Some mixed loyalties here because M & D both have a splash of Italian blood coursing through the veins, M also has some French and as we are in France she declares our loyalties should be with France not least because they kicked Portugal out in the semi final taking the smirk of the face of Ronaldo…that will teach him to get my hero Rooney sent off. Quick text to M’s brother Nick tells us when kick off time will be so we plan to have a quick bite (food of course!) and join in the fun.

But oh dear….we get into the room and D declares that he is feeling decidedly ill…in fact he has to go to bed, M has to find all sorts of medicines to administer….and that was it….D seemed to spend a lot of the evening in the bathroom…I will spare readers any more gory details…only to say it was tres horrible for both the participant and the audience…..

Poor M never got to go out for her French meal in Pau…it was a shame as she had waited 20 years to revisit Pau and it was going to be one of the high points of the trip. Still we took her out on a couple of walks so we could view all the thousands of excited French fans who were crowded around the Australian, Irish and French bars on the Boulevard des Pyrenees. In fact if we turned ourTV down in the room it was almost like we were in the stadium with all the cheering, gasping and screaming.

All the restaurants had set up TV’s so customers could view. The roar when France scored ….even we as temporary Francophiles were tres happy form them. M took us round the block and in that moment Italy scored…quelle horror!

Then before we knew it ..we got to extra time ….I got my ball out and had a kick round the room to remind them how it’s done. When Zidane got sent off there were very loud shouts and the French commentary was easy to follow as they were stunned into silence as they watched him head butt the Italian ~ all they could say was “oh non,non.non!” certainly not very gentlemanly behaviour in my books.

Then Thierry came off with an injury ..oh non! When it got to the penalty shoot out the French were going crazy…the whole of Pau resounded to a spontaneous chorus of the French national anthem and screams of Barthez Barthez!!....But alas it was not to be and the moment the final goal scored home for the Italians there was complete and utter silence in the streets around us…we could feel their shock and disbelief that all was lost. We felt sad for them…For about 10 minutes there was just nothing….and then they obviously decided to party all night anyway.

It was for us a very, very busy night with not a lot of sleep. Thankfully we actually had a very big room with big shutter windows , so we could let air in as there was no air con but the downside was the noise…although with the noise coming inside from the bathroom and the noise outside we were doomed anyway. M ended up sleeping on the floor with me so D could have all the bed to himself. Her dinner for the evening had been a Twix bar and a beer from the mini bar….how sad is that?