shinzu.blog

So basically the whole point of this trip would come to this day. Roland Garros. Tournament of the champions. A major grandslam. Breakfast of the champions. The Al Gore of global warming.. umm.. yea you get my point. Now on to the pictures.

The eternal question to take pictures of my car (Acura TSX) around the world. Obviously I was bestowed with some enlightenment when touching the car according to my expression.

So in France, Quick Q is the local fast food competitor to McDonalds.

Antoine recommended Le Procope as a place where they have the best apple pies, but unfortunately it was a restaurant and not a bakery so we passed on it.

We then went to Carton Bakery which was around the corner. I found this place by researching Parisian food blogs in the states.

Pastry selection

More pastries

Carton bakery pastry review

Instead of eating and walking, we stopped by the Seine River to eat.

Ben and Peter ran down so we could take a picture from the higher point of the bridge.

As you can see here, I packed on several layers instead of bringing a big jacket.

Our next stop was Saint Chapelle. It is a church where they are huge stain glass panes depicting illustrations from books from the Bible. We actually tried to go the day before but the line was out the door. What we learned was that the entrance actually passes through a security check-point since it shares the entrance with the court house.

We got there early at 9:20am to beat the line, but they didn’t end up opening till 10am (an hour late).

Saint Chapelle actually is 2 stories. This is a picture of the bottom floor.

Inside the church was pretty cool. If you stand and look around you see these huge glass pane windows. The only downside is it is sort of expensive to get in.

In Saint Chapelle they supposedly had the crown of thorns artifact when Jesus was crucified (!!!!). Later on we learned that the artifact got moved to the treasury of Notre Dame.

Reading the brochure.

So each big stain glass pane represents a book in the Bible.

Picture of the apocalypse (in accordance to Biblical scripture).

Video of Saint Chapelle.

At this point Ben and Peter wanted to see the Eiffel Tower while Rob and I wanted to go to the open early to check it out. Here you see a metro decorated.

We actually got off the wrong metro exit, so we had a little bit of a hike.

We walked down Rue Auteuil to get there.

For e-tickets we even had to walk FURTHER>

Right when we came we hit the practice courts. Roland Garros is set-up where one area has warm-up courts while they were 3 main courts. Court No 1, Suzanne Lengen, and Phillipe Chartier. All I know is I felt like a kid at a candy store at this point.

And look he we see in another practice court. Nadal!

Nadal video. The next day we actually would get a much better view of Nadal.

Rob and the practice court.

Some juniors play.

Wheel chair tennis semi final? They are freaking awesome.

Walking through Roland Garros.

Ferrer and Gonzalez.

Nadal’s practice partner

Line judge on at a cloudy time

Nadal’s practice partner serving

They had a bunch of booths set-up n the side.

This guy is so HOT.

Map of the grounds

Big poster

More roland garros stuff

Picture of the court. So for the french open, the court material is clay.

What’s interesting is for the clay they actually have to groom and maintain it after ever match.

Another court photo

Main court.

So in the main court we were going to watch the women’s quarters and the men’s quarters. There are 3 main courts. This is the center court which is Phillipe Chartier.

Camera that they slides across the stadium often

Our first match was Safina vs Dementieva.

So to cheer for a player, you would scream out their name in between points.

If you watched the French Open on tv you would notice they did a lot of weird fadeouts.

Our second match was Monfils vs Ferrer. Basically Monfils is a French guy where the crowd was going CRAZY over him.

When we went out to the restroom in between matches, EVERYONE was watching the match on the big screens. We were getting offers left and right for people to get our tickets.

What’s amazing about watching a grand slam is the complete silence that befalls the stadium when the players start to serve. It’s quite an amazing site.

During the match, even the French flags came out.

Of course I had to root for the Spanish guy (Ferrer). There were some other Spanish folk in the crowd but they were retarded. They barely even cheered. Throughout the match I would yell out “DAVID” (Ferrer’s first name), and like the entire section would turn around and look at me (for not supporting the French guy).

Monfils serving. During the match we actually befriended a French guy who ended up cheering with us. During the match we did some joint cheers which was pretty fun.

The stadium was PACKED for this match.

Giant tennis racket.

A video in between points

Now THIS was fun. The crowd got really rowdy and did a wave about 3 times around the stadium, event interrupting the match.

Mens quarters match point. That’s us booing hehe.

Giving a standing ovation to the winners

Picture in the empty court

Group pic

trying to remove the racket from the stand.

Pointing to my favorite player

A bad Nadal impression

Ben and Peter

Another pic in the stadium

Paying great detail to the game.

Playing around in the stadium

Afterwards we all bought some merchandise.

After a long tiring day, we went to Chez Dumont, a place Melody recommended.

Melody explaining the menu

The food here was nothing short of superb. This was our starter which was compliments of the chef. As you can notice, the plating is just as good as the food itself.

Rob’s stew

My meal. Pigeon in some scalloped potato thingy. So good. Super good.

For dinner, we had the privilege of Ben’s cousin, Jeremy joining us. Jeremy actually lives outside the suburb of Paris, and was a fascinating person to talk to. He does air traffic management and is one of those rare people who can socially hold a conversation with anyone.

So while we got our desert someone on another table asked where we were at. We told her we were from southern california, and it turned out she was from San Francisco. We ended up having a very nice conversation about Paris and the states. She ended up going to Roland Garros the same day also. She did some architecture work or something.

Tsk tsk.. ben always getting in trouble. This was a recycle box machine thingy.

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