Katherine's Next Trip!

My trip is over, but I had some thoughts I wanted to share. They might help you in your future travels to France or maybe your future Olympics trips, Milano Cortina is in 2026 and the one we’ve been waiting for, LA 2028!

As a sponsor of the Olympic Games, Coca Cola and its products were the only soft drinks available.  They did not have soda fountains, and we NEVER got handed a bottle.  They had bottles behind all the stands, but they had to pour the entire bottle into a reusable and returnable 2-euro cup.  Every time you got a drink it was the price PLUS 2 euro, which you could get back by returning the cup at most of the concession stands.  

If someone “forgot” their cup at their seat (like I did when I went to the restroom between tennis matches) then someone else could pick it up and get the refund!  I saw a man that had a stack of 10+ getting a refund back and I bet mine was one of his stack!  On the way out, I found an abandoned one to get my initial 2 euro back.  I made it home with my Opening Ceremonies cup and two sport specific cups.  Comparing how many times I bought a Coke Zero and only ending with 3, I feel like I got enough of my money back.  

There were SO MANY Olympics activities beyond the events.  We ventured over to Hotel de Ville, as it was the closest Fan Zone to our apartment, while it was raining and it was a bit deserted, obviously.  We didn’t go back, but a few of my Olympics friends went ALMOST EVERY DAY and they had so much fun watching the events on the big screen and playing the games and enjoying the atmosphere.  

There were many country team houses where you could meet Olympians, try native food from their country, and cheer on their athletes with the Olympic event broadcasts!  I really was jealous of the folks who managed to get into Champions Park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero to witness the celebrations of the victors after they received their medals.  Next time I want to focus on ONLY Olympic events, and possibly outside activities before or after the games. 

I caught the pin trading bug at Atlanta 1996, and the Olympic Pin Traders from Atlanta that hosted pre-Olympics meetups were so great!  We got many pins that we could trade and hyped us up for the games while meeting new friends we could keep up with while we were in Paris!  One of my new Olympic friends brought various USA pins to trade and he sought out people who looked like Olympic athletes to trade with, his first being someone from Brazil before he even left the airport!  

I was followed by a young family member of an Olympian in the Metro after the swimming finals because of how many pins I had on my lanyard, and I ended up trading for three Czech Olympic Team pins!  I only wore pins I was willing to trade, so I would trade with anyone that asked me.  I also think I traded with some NBC folks at rugby, where I got a USA Track and Field pin! I think that is a great way to meet people and if we had gone to more of the specific Olympic activities, I would have been able to trade more pins.  

You may have noticed my MANY meals of some sort of beef with many times boeuf bourguignon being my dish.  Before I went to France, I knew I had TRIED SO HARD to like French food and I had not been able to succeed.

My friend that lives there also lived in Italy when I was there shared a similar sentiment when I lamented that most of the food had just been not very exciting.  She made an interesting parallel between France and Italy.  In Italy, you can go to a neighborhood trattoria and get an AMAZING dish for less than 20 euro, but in France for the same amount, you just get what the French are used to having at home, not very special or amazing.  In France, to get an AMAZING dish, you need to visit one of the restaurants where you might pay 50+ euro for a dish.  

As I noted on the Metro and in the museums we visited, the “normal summer Paris visitor” stayed away from Paris this summer due to the Olympics.  Many Parisians also left town fearing the amount of people that would be descending on the metropolis.  The result was an even less than normal level of crowds EVERYWHERE.  I even heard reports from the French people who stayed that their friends were scrambling to change their plans to come back to the city after they heard how amazing the atmosphere was in town!  I can only count MAYBE twice that we even had to stand on the Metro, when it was even SLIGHTLY crowded during our stay.  

The one trip the previous week on our way to Nice was WAY more crowded than anything we experienced during the games. We were overwhelmed by crowds and squished and hot just hopping on the RER to change stations across Paris to get to Nice.

I was having problems deciding between using my AT&T international phone plan, getting a data only esim from a random internet company, or a full access data and calling esim from the French company Orange.  The full esim was only 20 more euro than the data only and I finally decided it was better to be safe than sorry and got the full package.  That was the BEST 50 euro I spent to help us achieve the goals we had for the trip.  When we were stranded in London, my “all Europe” sim card was available for me to use to call the airline multiple times, use WhatsApp to call my parents, and helped us finally get to our hotel that evening.  I didn’t have to worry about losing signal or any exorbitant fees, especially when my call from Nice to British Airways lasted over an hour.  I will ALWAYS get a full esim (not just data only) for my future international travels.  

Travel insurance.  Well, with the Microsoft meltdown, apparently “IT issues” aren’t a covered reason to enact the policy.  We ended up spending approximately $700-$800 for the hotel and last-minute train tickets to Nice, and we were only able to get about $400 back from the insurance company and British Airways.  I guess something is better than nothing!  And I was NOT going to miss the Tour de France.  It’s probably a good idea to keep that practice up.  

The announcers at each event were TOP NOTCH.  One bonus of getting there early was that the announcers would help you learn the rules of the game as well as teach the crowd cheers and “moves”.  There was one French speaking and one English speaking, both engaging the crowd with their energy and spirit.  At our first event, the announcers taught us cheers and chants with motions that went along to music that had them living in our brains for DAYS on end.  “Monster block! Monster block! Monster! Monster! Monster Block!” was one of our favs.  It really got the crowd engaged when it was very likely that the spectators who had purchased these tickets over a year in advance weren’t watching their own team or fellow countrymen.  We were all having fun and acting silly together and the sense of camaraderie was infectious throughout the city.  

It was a trip of a lifetime, we had SO much fun, learned a LOT, and I’m ready for LA 2028! Who’s in?