Day 3

Day 3 – ericksonsinparis

First day at the French Open. It began after a rather restless night with brilliant sunshine, which continued all day long. Low humidity. Fabulous. We left the hotel around 8:30, looking for a restaurant that served breakfast, le petit dejourner. As is true for later meals, we found a breakfast “package” that included croissant, coffee or tea, a couple of things we couldn’t translate. Rich, however, asked for an omelet, which the chef was welcome to provide for a little more than we had in mind. But it was delicious. I had the same, and we each had a “large” cup of coffee, which we have learned is not very large. It’s also a bit thicker and more bitter than we Americans are used to.
After breakfast we began our trek to Roland Garros. It takes us about half and hour. Lovely walk past stores and a neighborhood. We had decided to take some sandwiches with us, so we stopped in a supermarket on the way. We chose two sandwich packages that looked appealing, and our choice turned out to be quite good, though a bit larger than we had anticipated. We also met some other tennis fans stacking up on provisions as well. They were from the UK. The rest of our walk was uneventful, and we arrived at RG a little after 10:00 a.m. Rich had done his homework and planned which matches we would try to watch. We started with a ladies’ match between Nadia Petrova from Russia and Anastasia Rodionova from Australia. After three sets, Rodionova had pulled out quite an upset. The next match on the same court was American Marty Fish and a Brazilian named Mello. Mello gave Marty a run for his money. One set finally ended in a tiebreak 13-11. By the way, MF has a beautiful wife. She was pointed out to us by some Brits who had lived most of their lives in Bombay, India. On the other side of us sat a Mormon couple from Salt Lake City.
We ate our sandwiches little by little for several hours during the middle of the day. The third match that we watched was between a Chinese woman, Peng, and a Austrian named Paszek. Mlle. Peng won in straight sets. Finally we watched one set of a match between a lady Rich had met long ago at the Healthplex in Springfield, Stephanie Foretz Gacon (she is French) and a spunky young African Brit named Watson. I’m the one who thought she was spunky. She won the first set. Watching Stephanie and earlier Marty Fish and feeling frustrated when they failed to close out a game or a set that seemed to be theirs for the taking reminded me a little of being a soccer parent and the mean times we tried to will that ball into the goal, usually to no avail.
By the time we got home it was nearly 9:00 p.m. That’s a lot of tennis. We had a small dinner at the little Italian take out we had visited a couple of nights ago. It was just enough. We shared a three cheese concoction over penne and some yogurt. Now we are due to turn in, but are still a little wired. I am so, so sad to hear the news about Joplin, Missouri.
One thing I did not mention on the first day was that we encountered a scam-man almost immediately. While we were waiting at the Opera House with our luggage for our friend He Da to arrive, a man walked up to us with a ring in his hand. He offered it to us indicating that he had found it. We replied that it did not belong to us, but he did not go away. He persisted. After several declines on our part, he began to ask for money, very persistently. Finally, Rich handed him a dollar, which he not so politely refused, turned on his heel, and departed. Welcome to the world, Ericksons