Love'n Paris

We went to Roland Garros, the French Open tennis tournament, to see a few first-round matches this past Tuesday. It was the one pretty day in about a 10-day stretch of low-60s and lotsa rain. The preceding Sunday, we'd gone on our long-anticipated family randonnée, which started out promising but ended up with absolutely dreary, drenching cold rain. So I guess we might have earned the pretty weather Tuesday, though the boys might disagree since they got to hike in the rain but go to school in the sun. They didn't complain, though.

We had seats in the main stadium court - Court Philippe Chatrier to the initiated - and made our way to the stadium shortly after 11am. The first match, between two French women, was partly done. We enjoyed watching the choreography among the ballboys/girls, as well as the tennis. The next match was the completion of Roger Federer against an American, Michael Russell of Houston, which had been rain-postponed on Monday. Federer finished him off, though Russell seemed to get his licks in before becoming 1 of the (all) 9 US men to lose in the first round. Another women's match came on, and we went to get some lunch at the fancy food court. Highlights included the large beers, and the young Frenchmen who tried to scam in front of us in line and hilariously played dumb when some American tennis tourists yelled at them. Oh, and we now know where the models go during late May and early June - to jobs finding tables for people at the food court! I think it was while we stood in line for salads that we realized there were roughly no actual French people among the spectators. A friend later pointed out that's because French people live here and have jobs, which is fair, but I bet it's also because they can get tickets to the later rounds instead of these early mismatches.

After lunch we poked around the grounds for a bit, and Betsy scoped out the official men's towel she wanted, and little things for the boys. We went back in to see Marcos Baghdatis against a Frenchman named Sebastien Grosjean, who was playing on his birthday. You can guess who the crowd fave was, but Bagdatis earned cheers for overruling the ump in his opponent's favor at least once, and generally playing better.

I had to leave before that one was done to go get the boys, but Betsy stayed to See Rafael Nadal, the two-time defending champ, in the last match of the evening. She either thinks he's pretty cute, or was enjoying playing with the camera after I left, or both, because we got a LOT of pictures of him! See some, along with other highlights, here.

I'll try to post more soon, including about our canal boat ride today, but our second computer died last week so we're down to sharing this one. Hope all are well at home and enjoying the sunny days!