Today, we’ve got women’s quarterfinals basketball at the Bercy arena, which is next-door to the Gare de Lyon where we arrived in Paris. But before that, we have to go to the Gare de Montparnasse and add another week to Sean’s Navigo transit card. There is a long line of people doing the same, but there is also an SNCF employee helping anyone having difficulty, so the line goes pretty quickly. Beth and I did not use our Navigo cards until the following day, so we’ll have to go through the whole process again tomorrow.
When we get to the Bercy Metro station, judging from the
fans on the street, one of the teams playing is going to be Belgium. We have
decided to find lunch before going into the Arena and find a café that has
takeout. We all get baguettes of various sorts and find a public area where we
can sit to eat and amuse ourselves by seeing how close to us the pigeons are
willing to get in order to get some of our meal. The answer is about 6 inches!
After the ritual questioning of my camera, we walk
toward the venue and see the answer to a question we’d had for several days:
Where are all of these spectators getting flag face paint for their countries? It turns out that someone has made lipstick sort of dispensers with three
colors side by side in a variety of colors so all you have to do is present your
cheek and in a few seconds, you have flags on both cheeks. I don’t
know how many euros they are paying, but this seems like an insanely profitable
business given the number of countries that have flags composed of either vertical or horizontal
stripes.
Here is a view from inside the arena:
The Belgians, ranked 6th in the world are playing Spain, who are ranked 5th so this should be a good game. Spain went 3-0 in pool play with wins against China, Puerto Rico and Serbia although the wins against China and Puerto Rico were both by 1 point. Belgium was very, very lucky to be here. They started out losing their first two games to Germany and the US, so they had to win their last pool game against Japan by 27 points in order to advance. And that is exactly how many they won by, 85-58! They were led by former WNBA player, 6’4” power forward Emma Meeseman (who was also the leading scorer in the Tokyo 2021 tournament). Meeseman had 30 points and 11 rebounds as Belgium dominated Japan in the paint and under the boards.
Spain will be a tough opponent. They are led by a WNBA player, 6’3” power forward Megan Gustafson and have two other former WNBA players as well. As expected, the game starts out very close. It is tied 26-26 after one period, but Belgium is lights out from the field, shooting 55% overall including 8 of 16 from beyond the 3-pt arc and takes an 18 pt lead into the 4th quarter before Spain comes back a little for a final score of 79-66. Gustafson does all she can with 21 pts/7 rebounds but other than her and former WNBA player Cazorla Maite with 13 pts no one is in double figures. Meeseman has 19 pts/9 rebounds and was aided by Kyara Linskens with 19 pts/8 rebounds and Julie Vanloo with 13 pts/7 assists. Here are some pictures:
We are not very hungry, so we decide to go to a Lebanese restaurant in Montparnasse for dinner. It is around 7 pm so, of course, there is only one person in the restaurant other than the server. But the food is really good. I got a couple of micro-baklavas for dessert, but we are on vacation, so we stop at Amarino for gelato on the way home! Steps for the day: 7,449.
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