Argentina win in Paris

La Boca, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Yesterday was the start of the Rugby World Cup in Paris, when France were playing Argentina at the Stade de France, near our office in the north of Paris. From the little I could see, Paris was going only a little bit Rugby crazy and it was great to see an exhibition of Tango dancing at Gare du Nord on my way to catch the train back to Amsterdam (another four hour, two dinner journey).

Fred and I will be back in Paris, all being well, in four weeks time for the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp when there will also be a quarter final being played at the Stad de France stadium. If Argentina win their group (they will probably have to beat Ireland to do so), they are due to play, which'll be good. No Argentinean horses expected to run in the itself however.

Silly me, I did not get round to booking the train a week ago and now the price has gone up from € 69 to € 202 per person, which is a bit of a bugger. Travelling by train isn't necessarily cheap and one hardly gets rewrded for taking a form of transport which is 90% cleaner than flying. In the meantinme, the Dutch Government wants to impose a tax on air travel of between € 12 and € 24 a flight. All very well, but they will not be spending the income on environmental policies but on tehir social policies. Again, all very well, but with more expensive flights there will be fewer flights and fewer jobs and more money to be spent on umemployment benefit and how does the environmnet realy benefit? Silly people.