I’m just back from a hot, sweaty Paris. We’ve spent the last few days watching the Olympic Games.
It’s an absolute privilege to watch human endeavour at its peak. These athletes are the best at what they do, sacrificing years to play and perform on this world stage. It was breathtaking.
We booked our tickets a year ago for table tennis, badminton, volleyball, hockey and basketball.
One of the most memorable moments was watching the first round of table tennis. Not quite, but almost ringside seats for this history-making match, between Luxembourg’s Ni Xia Lian, a 61-year-old grandmother and 31-year-old Turkish player Sibel Altinkaya. The younger opponent was deftly beaten in this incredible match. Auntie, as she is known, went through to the next round only to be beaten by the 23-year-old Chinese world and Olympic silver medallist, Sun Yingsha.
This wasn’t like our usual trips to Paris. We'd move slowly, taking in art galleries, strolling through museums, leisurely lunches, an art-house film playing in rep.
This time it was early starts, cramming ourselves onto hot stuffy metros, to reach stadiums at the end of lines, joining endless queues to find our seats (mostly with the Gods) to watch the early rounds of sport that rarely make it on to TV.
Our last stop was Lille, to watch the basketball - two matches Greece vs Spain and Australia vs Canada. You can’t help but get whooped up in the crowd frenzy of a basketball game. And what an opportunity to see NBA players sport their national colours.
That aside, the best thing about Lille was Lille.
It was my first time there, and I want to go back.
It's easy to get to via the Eurostar (just over an hour) and arrive in a city that feels like the offspring of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. Long thin renaissance buildings with exquisitely carved mouldings, cobbled streets, discovering cafes and bistros that served waffles, moules, chocolate, good coffee, cakes, and ‘le Welsh’, their version of a cross between a croque monsieur and Welsh rarebit. This needs further investigation!
The best baguette in Paris
I had wanted to drop by Au Levain des Pyrénées , run by Tharshan Selvarajah, a Sri Lankan, who last year was awarded Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Francaise de la Ville De Paris (or best baguette in Paris). His bakery is in the 20th arrondissement a far cry from the typical Haussmann boulevards. But it was his bread that won against 175 rivals to be crowned best baguette in Paris in 2023.
Anna Muckerman, of Hungry with Ideas, interviewed me on her podcast has story about Tharshan, you can read it here.
Join me at the Sri Lankan Culture Collective
And finally, I want to say a big thank you to the many of you who joined the Sri Lankan Culture Collective waitlist. And a huge thank you to those who bought tickets to our event. I’m excited that I will finally get to meet some of you, feed you and entertain you!
This one-day Sri Lankan culture fest is on 22 September at the Battersea Barge, Nine Elms Lane, London, SW11 8PZ.
This event is part of South Asian Heritage Month, organised in partnership with Hera Project X Sri Lanka and Wandsworth Council.
If you didn’t join the waitlist, don’t worry, tickets to the Sri Lankan Culture Collective one-day culture fest are on sale now, starting at less than £17! And we have an early bird offer, of 10% running until 6 August.