KEY POINTS:
Some random musings on Marseille:
- Marseille makes Auckland look very, very clean.
- If you want to stretch your per diems, eat and drink away from the old port area.
- Baguettes filled with fries and spicy sauce are surprisingly edible.
- If you wanted a city that defines "melting pot" then you'd be hard-pressed to find a better example than Marseille.
- Stade Velodrome is extremely basic but a great venue to watch sport nonetheless.
- In the south of France at least, cleavage is definitely de rigeur (so my colleagues tell me).
The All Black show moves on from Marseille in the next couple of days, first to Lyon, then Aix-en-Provence just north of Marseille, then Edinburgh.
This city has moved heaven and several tonnes of earth to accommodate the team and they will miss them.
* There is a worse feeling than losing your wallet in an overseas country, a reader explains: "Try losing your car keys up the mountain [Ruapehu], not have any spare keys, and you need to get back to Auckland. Couple that with the fact they can't make a new key as it needs a special code and the car needs to be towed to a Holden dealer... and that ain't going to happen over the weekend."
* Ali Williams caused a bit of mirth among eavesdropping journalists on Wednesday when he was waiting for his turn to be grilled by the print media. Anton Oliver was ahead of him in the queue so he turned to All Blacks communications manager Scott Compton and said: "If it's Anton talking I might as well go to my room for 45 minutes."
He was right too, and that's why a lot of scribes will be a little disappointed that Anton's AB career is almost over.
