Stade de France

It was my first time being at this stade (and attending the Olympics). It's a good venue but it isn't very easy to get to and there didn't seem to be good public transport connections from around Paris (when I was doing my initial research in booking my hotel). I was lucky to find a hotel in Saint-Denis (the walk was 28 mins). It was much more efficient to walk the whole distance than to walk to a bus or train stop and then having to walk another 10 or 20 minutes to finally get to the stade. A lot of road closures impacted public transport routes but this doesn't really make sense when people are trying to get to the stade for the Olympics. Wait time in the queue on the game days was over an hour and this was not pleasant because there was no shade outside each gate at all. No drinking fountains in the stade but you can fill your water bottle in any of the bathrooms. Condition of the bathrooms seemed okay but the ones that had no toilet seats was a bit of a shock to me. Food options weren't great at all but not sure if this was something the stade had control over or whether it was decided by the Olympics. I couldn't believe that pommes frites was not on the menu! Seats were fine and there are lifts although some lifts were hard to find and it didn't seem like they went to all the levels, which was confusing. I didn't see a lot of wheelchair access cubicles in the bathrooms that I accessed so perhaps these are only available in the lower bowl area because the lifts can't go the upper floors. There also didn't appear to be a wheelchair access entry point from the street level and staff seemed to be a bit clueless. It was quite easy to access the various floors in the stade via the stairs and to move around as you pleased. Good signage with clear directions although it was a headache when the exit points were closed off at the end of each game day and spectators had to go through the main exit i.e. take the long way around to leave the stade. Speaker system was very good so as a spectator the announcements and (of course) music were audible.