Orange Vélodrome — Attraction in Marseille

This stadium holds many thousands of people. It was a great place to go watch a soccer match.👏🏼 Morocco versus Spain in the semifinal Olympic 2024 games.. lots and lots and lots of Morocco fans. But Spain did win - almost at the very end 2-1 This amount of noise, the fans made with singing whistles cheering in unison was fantastic. It’s an open air stadium and I suggest that you get there early to find your seat . They did search our bags and you cannot take in water bottles or automatic battery operated fans it seems The rows of seats are very close together, where we were in the first section. So much so that there’s only enough room to walk single between the seats. Leaving the stadium there is just a mass of people all going towards the Metro or just walking. Announcements were both in French and English, but this may be just because it was the Olympics Energy was very high, but be prepared for very loud environment and maybe take some earplugs. My watch informed me almost immediately that I was in a very loud noise environment. The people were nice enough- loud and ebullient but at the end of the game police came out in SWAT gear and with shields. There was lots of police and military all around on the way to and from the stadium and at the stadium. I would go again either to this stadium or another the energy was...

We watched the England v Fiji quarter final at 5pm on Sunday 15th October. The stadium is modern with 17 clearly marked gates, so finding our seat was easy. We entered via gate 12 and were close to the halfway line, with the sun initially beaming down on us but by the time the match started we were sat in the shade so our view wasn't a problem. The seats are quite closely packed in so squeezing along the rows isn't easy, we saw more than a few drinks being spilled.

There are plenty of toilets and food take-aways. There were plenty if staff on hand and because of the recent outbreak of war in the middle-east security at and around the stadium was very high. This didn't detract from the atmosphere as everyone was in high spirits. Getting to the stadium wasn't too bad, we shared a €40 taxi from the quai.

After the match we headed to the metro stadium but even after delaying leaving the stadium by nearly an hour the metro station was packed. So we headed out on foot heading in the general direction of the city and railway station. Thanks to Louisa and Howard though we were lucky to meet them and give us a very generous lift back to Aix-en-Provence, a journey of less than 30 minutes.

A nice...

We went for two RWC 2023 pool games. The organisation was atrocious so we spent more time queuing than watching the matches. There weren't enough metro trains, so all the journeys were horrendous, crammed into overcrowded, stifling hot carriages. On the 2nd evening, the barriers weren't open for the return journey, and only a few accepted credit cards, which was how most people wanted to pay! We queued on dangerous steps for over an hour to get into the stadium, so there clearly weren't enough control points. And, they ran out of beer at half time on both nights. We've been to other big events here and not experienced the same problems, so I just don't understand how they got this so wrong. I just hope it's better for the quarter finals 🙏 June 2025 update: just been to Bruce Springsteen and Ed Sheeran concerts here. Still big queues for everything: entrance/exit, drinks and loos, especially the ladies as always. At least they didn't run out of beer though. Oh, and take as little as possible with you as there's no space under the seats to put a bag, and very little space between the rows which makes passing others to get to your seat like walking...