I apologize for the delay with some of these blog postings. We have been going to bed so late at night in Paris (dinners take nearly three hours!) and getting up pretty early, so I’ve postponed writing in favor of a few extra minutes of sleep. I wrote these last few posts on the plane ride home yesterday, and they should all be posted soon.
On Thursday, we took a break from the typical tourist attractions in Paris and headed to Roland-Garros for Round Two of the French Open tennis tournament. I don’t know a thing about tennis, but when I first started reading my Paris guidebook, it mentioned special events for each month. I saw that the French Open would begin during our visit, mentioned to Dan that it might be fun to see that, and voilà – he figured out how to get us tickets. It was truly one of the most memorable experiences of the trip.
In the morning, we managed to squeeze in an extra hour of sleep. It is really tough keeping local hours at night, staying out for very leisurely dinners, and keeping tourist hours in the daytime, getting up early and being out and about all day long. It’s worth it to see so much, though. At any rate, we planned to get to the French Open at Roland-Garros Stadium around noon. You buy tickets for a specific day in a specific court without knowing who will be playing yet, but you are able to stay and see all four matches on your court for that day. We got lucky and found out that Rafael Nadal would be playing a match at 1pm in our assigned court – the main one, Court Philippe Chatrier. The matches start at 11am, but we decided to try and arrive around noon instead, to catch a few more zzz’s in the morning.
Our hotel is in the western part of Paris, at the top of a large park called the Bois de Boulogne. This park is enormous (more than 2000 acres) and very much like Central Park in New York. Roland-Garros is located at the southern edge of the Bois de Boulogne, so I thought it would be nice to walk through the park to the stadium. Dan and I both commented that there seemed to be an inordinate number of people out jogging and walking their dogs for a Thursday morning, but the weather had finally cleared and we were able to enjoy a nice long stroll. (I say long, because it took nearly an hour and a half of walking to get to our destination. We have definitely worked off all the calories from our pain au chocolat this week!) We even saw some wildlife along the way, in the form of ducks and bunnies.
Upon arrival at Roland-Garros, we picked up our tickets, ventured inside and marveled at the spectacle of it all. There are four main “show courts” and about 16 side courts that were all filled with ongoing matches and spectators. Our tickets got us into the main court, Philippe Chatrier, and all the side courts. As I mentioned before, we got lucky that Rafael Nadal was scheduled to play on our court, and we were very excited to experience this quintessential French sporting event. We had just enough time to wander around before settling into our seats and catching the tail end of the 11am match between Jelena Jankovic and Kurumi Nara.
Now, I spent much of our flight to London and our train ride to Paris trying to sleep, but what I really should have been doing was reading “Tennis for Dummies.” I had no idea how the point system worked, when to be quiet, how to keep track of who was serving, etc. Dan was very patient and explained it all to me, and over the course of Nadal’s match, I caught on to the basics. By the end, I knew all about holding and breaking the serve, deuce, match point, and all those other tennis-y things. Nadal played an Austrian who was quite a lively character and kept us all entertained with his exaggerated groans and temper fits when things didn’t go his way. Nadal won in straight sets and it was very exciting to see the best player in the world. Ladies, I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of him changing his shirt in between each set. The crowd got quite a kick out of that!
The match started at 1pm and we didn’t want to miss any of it, so by the time we left our court to go and find some lunch, it was past 3:30. Concession stands were everywhere, selling ham and cheese baguettes, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and more. The French may enjoy very late dinners, but they do not seem to be big on late lunches. All of the ham and cheese baguettes were sold out at each stand we went to. Eventually Dan got a cheeseburger and I got a hot dog. Can’t watch sports without a hotdog, right? We also found it amusing that they sold non-alcoholic beer. To keep the crowd in check, there is no booze, but I guess they figured that people still wanted to feel like they were having a beer.
The next match scheduled for our court featured a Frenchman named Richard Gasquet, so we decided to return to our seats rather than trying our luck at one of the side courts. It was so much fun to watch the crowd cheer for a fellow Frenchman at the French Open, and he was much more evenly paired with his opponent than Nadal had been. He ended up winning in straight sets, but the first set needed a tie-breaker and took a full hour to play! After that ended, we still had a little bit of time before we needed to head to dinner, so we wandered around the stadium some more, caught a bit of a women’s doubles match, and took in the sights. It was a fantastic day, and I am really glad that we had it on our itinerary.
Dinner on Thursday night was at a spot called L’Estrepade in the Latin Quarter. We figured we’d pick a neighborhood that we hadn’t explored yet and eat there, so that if we wanted to grab a drink after dinner, there would be places to do that. (Once our trip started, we realized that dinner would end after 11pm every night, so there were actually no post-dinner drinks anywhere.) We found L’Estrepade on Trip Advisor, and like everything else, it was delicious. Dan was adventurous and tried the roast duck breast, and he was even able to order his own food in French! He added in one or two extra syllables here and there, but our waitress got the gist of it. I had the steak, and we both had pretty good desserts, but I think we liked our appetizers the best. Dan had a fascinating egg with cheese and chorizo sauce, and I had a very light crab salad. Definitely different from what we’d been having thus far on the trip and very yummy!
After dinner, we wandered past the Pantheon and the University of Paris on our way to the Metro to head back to our hotel. All of our days have been long, but it feels like we are really taking advantage of our time here. Tomorrow we are off to the Catacombes, the Musee d’Orsay, and a dinner cruise along the Seine to cap off our vacation week!
