CRICKETERS GO SIGHTSEEING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23334, 28 October 1937, Page 17

CRICKETERS GO SIGHTSEEING

NEW ZEALANDERS AT PARIS

(From the Special Correspondent with the team.) PORT SAID, Oct. 6. A week in England after'the last match against Ireland provided the New Zealand cricketers with opportunities for unrestricted sight-see-ing, as well as for the serious business of buying presents for friends at home, before their departure for Australia. ■ Before embarkation on the Orontes, too, they visited France, catching the ship at Toulon. The players completed a comprehensive programme at Paris, where they visited the extensive and impressive Paris Exhibition, saw the tombs of Napoleon and Foch, ascended the Eiffel Tower, attended a performance of the famous Folies Bergeres and had incidental but unforgettable excitement in drives with the deathdefying taxi drivers of Paris. On their train journey to Toulon they passed down the lower reaches of the beautiful Rhone Valley. The Paris Exhibition proved a most enjoyable and educative outing.. Side-show alley, really a vast amusement park, provided plenty of fun. The old-fashioned coconut shy in various forms provided the players with rich bounty. In one obstacles had to be knocked down with thrown balls to win bottles of champagne. French candidates for these prizes appeared to have considerable difficulty in winning anything. M. P. Donnelly and W. E. Hadlee, however, proved that their reputations as throwers in the outfield had not been undeservedly gained. If they could have stayed an hour at the stall they would probably have sent the owner bankrupt. In a few minutes they won five bottles of champagne. Both being teetotallers, they gained little out of their success except the pleasure of accomplishing something attempted. M. L. Page and A. W. Roberts sailed from London, and thus were able to have several hours of sightseeing at Gibraltar. The naval base is by no means the lonely fortress on a barren rock that it is popularly supposed. There is a colourful and cosmopolitan town, in which articles may be bought at astounding prices, due to there being next to no system of taxation. The Rock also provides the visitor with two of the engineering marvels of the world—the galleries hewn out of the limestone rock to provide mountings for batteries, and the corrugated iron laid over all one side of the Rock to catch rain and provide the town with its water supply. At Naples the players made an excursion to the ruins of Pompeii, and in the streets of the city saw on the march companies of the soldiers of Mussolini. Toulon harbour was dotted with submarines, destroyers and cruisers, at the time of the visit of the Orontes, and overhead roared the seaplanes and flying boats of the French. The whole atmosphere was one of precaution against trouble, but the Orontes proceeded unescorted on a normal course through the Mediterranean. The Orontes soon showed itself to be an excellent sailing ship, and the travellers were blessed with pleasant cruising weather. A tiled swimming bath and a . full-size tennis court on the top deck added to the pleasures of the voyage, on which a fellow passenger is J. H. Human, a member of the team taken to New Zealand by E. R. T. Holmes, as he is on his way to his marriage at Sydney. Organised deck games were not to begin till after passing Suez, so that it remains to be seen if the cricketers will "scoop the pool,'-' as they did on the Arawa. The Orontes is a crowded ship, among the passengers being scores of Italians going'to settle in Australia. At Naples many sacks of walnuts were put aboard. It was explained that these were being taken to Australia for Italians, there now being more Italians in Australia than Australians!