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Europe

Where to score a chic stay in France As football fans find out where their teams are playing in Euro 2016 in France, Tristan Rutherford picks the best hotels from Lille to Lyons t’s the event in Europe next year. From June 10, ten stadiums in nine French cities will welcome millions of football fans including those from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Today’s draw for the group stage at 5pm reveals the fixtures, and where and when they will be played. Air France and SNCF have laid on extra flights and trains, but reservations are a must because accommodation will fill up fast.

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Bordeaux France’s wine capital is taking Euro 2016 seriously, with one of the largest fan zones outside Paris. Here 50,000 revellers can watch all 51 matches on a 116 sq m giant screen. The tourist office also has a list of football-friendly bars, including the Cock & Bull in downtown La Victoire and the Frog & Rosbif on

the quays of the River Garonne. See the sights with a £25 three-day Citypass, which includes bus, tram and river shuttle access to the shiny Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux football stadium, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the architects behind the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing. The adjoining lake district of parks and sunbathing beaches is Bordeaux’s best. Farther north is Médoc wine country, easily reached by bike or car using the official Bordeaux wine trip app. Where to stay It’s a campsite, but not as you know it. The luxurious four-star Village du Lac (00 33 557 87 70 60, camping-bordeaux.com) is by a lake, has an outdoor swimming pool and is a 20-minute walk from the stadium. Four-person lakeside chalets are from £94 a night. In town, hipster Mama Shelter (00 33 557 30 45 45, )

mamashelter.com) has a fan-friendly rooftop bar and B&B doubles from £72.

Lens The newly renovated Stade BollaertDelelis hosts 40,000 fans — that’s 10,000 more than the population of petite Lens. The massive city centre fan zone, near a huge outpost of the Louvre that opened in 2012, will wow a further 8,000 spectators with giant TV screens, DJs and concerts. Lens’s other big attraction, farther north of the stadium, is the, er, Base 11/19 Slag Heap heritage site. A historical mining town with adjoining tunnels, it’s more fun than it sounds. The Euro 2016 venue of Lille is a 40-minute train ride away; the crunch matches held in Paris are a little more than an hour away by TGV. Where to stay Trendy, friendly Villa (

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Louvre Lens (00 33 782 88 45 58, villa-louvre-lens.com) offers a belting communal breakfast in the farmhousestyle kitchen as part of the £54 room price. Or bed down in a four-person Mongolian yurt on the working farm of Moulin de Bois (00 33 321 73 74 42, fermedumoulindebois.fr), a ten-minute drive from downtown Lens. Yurt doubles cost from £48 a night.

Lille Lille will have direct TGV access to every Euro 2016 host city, as well as holding six matches in its new Stade Pierre-Mauroy. A fan zone, with its own dining areas, will screen every game. Lille’s £18 City Pass 24h grants access to all public transport and every museum, including the fabulous La Piscine-Musée d’Art et d’Industrie, inside a 1932 art deco swimming pool complex. Alternatively, cycle through historic Lille on a guided tandem tour (£12.50). Where to stay Lille has dozens of charming chambres d’hôtes, or homestay B&Bs. Sylvie and Denis Gaboriau manage the four chic suites in La Maison du Champlain (00 33 320 54 01 38, lechamplain.fr), which cost from £110 B&B. There’s a hammam and spa bath in the basement. For something more upmarket, the design-heavy Clarance Hôtel (00 33 3 59 36 35 59, clarancehotel.com) opened in an elegant palais this year and costs from £131 room-only a night.

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The Times {Weekend}

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Where to stay A short stroll south from the fan zone is the fun OKKO Hôtel (00 33 428 00 02 50, okkohotels.com). With doubles from £117 a night, it also boasts the Black Forest Society German cocktail bar; think gin and riesling concoctions with mini-schnitzels. Just as fun is Collège Hôtel (00 33 472 10 05 05, collegehotel.com), with B&B doubles from £95. This art deco guesthouse has a school theme with vintage refectory tables, plus 39 rooms painted entirely in white.

Marseilles France’s second city is football mad. Its freshly renovated Stade Vélodrome will host five key matches next June, plus a crunch semi-final in early July. The largest fan zones will be at the nearby Prado Beach, with massive screens near the Mediterranean. Another zone will sit behind the MuCEM, Marseilles’ fabulous new Mediterranean history museum on its own peninsula by the Vieux Port. Where to stay A short walk from Marseilles’ stadium is the fabulously fun Hôtel Le Corbusier (00 33 491 16 78 00, hotellecorbusier.com), with room-only doubles from £58. It offers modular rooms inside the Swiss architect’s 1950s unité d’habitation tower block. Farther south, set inside a 19th-century mansion, is Hôtel 96 (00 33 491 71 90 22, hotel96.com), with doubles from £72 room only. The swimming pool is dappled by 100-year-old plane trees.

Lyons

Nice

Olympique Lyonnais, the local club, are big hitters in French football. Little wonder that six games — including one semi-final — have been awarded to the city’s Stade des Lumières, which opens early next year. The stadium is just south of the Grand Parc Miribel, a 22 sq km park with sandy beaches, bike lanes and vast expanses of kayak-friendly lake. Cleverly, city officials have drafted in the Cannes film festival boss, Thierry Frémaux, to enhance the buzz at the 20,000-capacity fan zone in Place Bellecour. If you’re using Lyons as your Euro 2016 base, you can sprint to matches in Marseilles (1hr 40min), Paris (2hr) and Lille (3hr) by direct TGV.

Fingers crossed that your team will be based in the sun-kissed capital of the French Riviera. The big games held in Marseilles are a TGV ride away, while the beaches of Italy are a 40-minute hop east. Fittingly, one of the city’s two fan zones will be on the beachfront Promenade des Anglais. Giant screens on the beach will also show the action from across France. The fan zones will also host a pop-up from the city’s new Musée National du Sport, which holds 45,000 pieces of France’s football and Olympic history. The museum opened in 2014 next to the Stade Allianz Riviera, where Nice’s four Euro 2016 games will be played. Where to stay The Riviera’s top holiday (

letting agency, Pebbles (00 33 497 20 27 30, rivierapebbles.com), manages 165 apartments in downtown Nice from £65 a night — one of them owned by a French football star. Each property offers superfast wi-fi, TV and a complimentary beer pack for each Euro 2016 booking. Alternatively, a short stagger from Nice’s fan zone and three-mile public beach is the elegant Hotel Beau Rivage (00 33 492 47 82 82, hotelnicebeaurivage.com) with doubles from £121.

Paris Paris has two stadiums: the Parc des Princes, where France won the Euro ’84 competition, and the Stade de France, where Les Bleus won the World Cup in 1998. The 80,000-seat Stade de France will host seven matches, including the final on July 10. Up to 120,000 supporters will squeeze inside the fan zone underneath the Eiffel Tower to watch matches, including the dozen hosted in town. Near the Parc des Princes, the new Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton Foundation, known for its madcap exhibitions, welcomes architecture fans. Where to stay The eco-camp Paris Indigo (00 33 1 45 24 30 00, campingparis.fr) is the only campsite in central Paris and has a four-person gypsy caravan from £71 a night. It also has chic chalets and African-style canvas tents and sits across the Bois de Boulogne from the Parc de Princes stadium. The Stade de France area isn’t known for its hotels; instead, families should bed down at the palatial B&B Manoir de Beauregard (00 33 1 42 03 10 20, manoir-de-beauregard-paris.com), which has massive four-person suites from £194 B&B.

Saint-Étienne Euro 2016 is big news in little Saint-Étienne. Its tourist office website has a countdown clock to its four host games at the famed “cauldron” of Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, from where FC Saint-Étienne dominated French football in the 1970s. The city’s cultural showpiece is the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain; collections run from

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The Times {Weekend}

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Henri Matisse to Gilbert and George. Design geeks can make for the nearby town of Firminy. Here Le Corbusier designed everything from the stadium and community centre to the local swimming pool. In the other direction, local trains depart to the fellow host city Lyons every 15 minutes at peak times. The journey takes 40 minutes. Where to stay Six local hotels have signed up for the Saint-Étienne Hôtel D concept, where a design team remodels at least one guestroom. These include the bargain Hôtel Continental (00 33 477 32 58 43, hotelcontinental42.fr) inside a former Post Office, which offers slimmed down Habitat chic and rooms from £26 a night. The ultra-stylish Hôtel du Golf (00 33 477 41 41 00, hoteldugolf42.com) is five minutes from town and has a swimming pool and B&B doubles from £102.

Stade Vélodrome, Marseilles

Toulouse The historic Stadium Municipal on the Île du Ramier, a leafy island in the River Garonne, hosts four Euro 2016 games. Visit Canoë-Kayak Toulousain for a paddle on the river or set out for Les Abbatoirs, a cutting-edge art gallery, two miles from the city centre. The central fan zone will host an appearance by Toulouse’s football ambassador, the former France and Manchester United goalkeeper Fabien Barthez. Where to stay There are no hotels of note near the stadium on Île du Ramier. Bed down in the nearby city centre at bargain bling Pullman Toulouse (00 33 561 10 23 10, pullmanhotels.com), which has a vast lobby bedecked with contemporary art. Room-only doubles are from £99. Even closer to the stadium is Les Clos des Salins (00 33 616 25 13 30, apparttoulouse.fr) with a four-person apartment from £61 a night.

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The Times {Weekend}

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Clarance Hôtel, Lille

OKKO Hôtel, Lyons

OKKO Hôtel, Lyons

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Place de la Bourse, Bordeaux

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Need to know

Mama Shelter, Bordeaux

How to get there Eurostar (eurostar.com) offers direct access from London St Pancras to five Euro 2016 cities (Marseilles, Lyons, Lille and the two in Paris), or seven if you count Lens and Saint-Étienne, a quick hop down the tracks from Lille and Lyons. SNCF (voyages-sncf.com) has direct travel to every host city from the Eurostar hub of Lille. About 700 extra trains will ferry supporters from stadium to stadium during the competition.

One of the Pebbles apartments in Nice

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