Farewell to the city of blinding lights

Ah, beware the kindness of friends… Planning my journey to Paris three years ago for the game which would go down in infamy as the one touched by the ‘Hand Of Gaul’, I cheerfully followed the advice of a colleague and booked into what sounded like a nice, friendly, conveniently located hotel on the left bank of the Seine.

And, indeed, it was all of those things but also much, much more, as became immediately apparent when I opened the door to my room and saw that the bed cover was turned back and the sheet and pillow liberally strewn with red rose petals. Such a welcome, let me assure you, is not the norm for us football-following warriors of the road. It turned out that we had ended up in a boutique hotel which, upon further investigation, unashamedly proclaimed its status as “one of Europe’s premier love nests”. And, yes, thanks for asking, we’re still very happy together and planning to go back for the anniversary.

Then there was our trip to Kiev last December for the Euro finals draw. Again, an enterprising colleague had sourced what sounded like ideal lodgings for our humble needs, but what the official website somehow neglected to inform us – even in the attractive photographs which must have been taken from some very astute, not to say acrobatic, angles — was that the hotel was actually a boat moored on the river, reception accessed by a gangplank and the rooms no more than moderately enhanced versions of ships’ cabins. Ah, the glamour of it all… So, now fast-forward to our voyage to Astana this week, a city located a mere 3,000 miles, an entire continent and five time zones away from our departure point in dear old Dublin — I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Again, a few of us took our lead from a colleague who’d appeared to hit pay-dirt on the internet — a hotel located “just 800 metres” from the football stadium in the Kazakh capital. Bingo! We all piled on.