Our agenda of the day was to go to the museum of communism. On the way was the real wenscelas square. Turns out I navigated to the wrong street the day before.

My favorite store in New York. I was surprised to see it here. Unfortunately their selection sort of sucked.

A cool citibank advertisement.

The museum of communism was sort of in a weird area. You would walk through a lobby where it literally said like ‘casino on the right’, ‘museum of communism on the left’.

Inside the museum

The museum of communism is basically a place where they collected a lot of relics from the communist times. It’s interesting to see the propaganda first hand.

A teddy bear with a rifle. Classic.

I was reading the captioning around the area and it was talking about communist governments really relied on sports to hold their grip on power.

Interesting to see the other side of the media

The caption is ‘an american policeman’

The communist governments even tried to control their people through art. Not sure how successful they were in that endeavor though.

No museum pics are complete without imitations.

I have no idea who this is

Video

In Wensclas square

Afterwards we went to National Gallery where we got student discount to go in. Unfortunately they don’t allow pics in the museum, but it was really quite interesting.

In national gallery there was this weird exhibit where you can run down a long hall and hit a mattress. I think it was something about physics, but Ben and I raced to the end. I got sort of scared of running full speed into the mattress so I slowed down a lil.

Pic looking out of the national gallery.

Outside of the national gallery we saw a bunch of people snapping pictures of this person. We weren’t quite sure what was going on.

Video of the model?

After the model shoot, even more weirdness.

Umm.. monks?

These two ladies were just standing outside and Pete talked to them. Seems like they ’supposedly’ work for an airline but some of us were just guessing that they dressed up like that to get attention.

Dan smash!

I’m trying to make a rainbow motion. Get it? Or not haha..

An interesting civic I haven’t seen in the states before.

Back of the civic

For dinner, we went to go eat across the place we ate the day before (I forgot the name of this restaurant).

A cute waiter in the restaurant.

The food here was pretty reasonably priced and pretty traditionally czech. I’ve noticed the food is heavy on the bread dumplings and some type of goulash dish.

Peter and I got the same dish.

Rob decided to be different and got pork ribs.

I think Ben got the same thing also.

Dinner video

Afterwards we went to a pool hall where Ben played some Czech guy and almost got ripped off. The place was pretty big, but looked slightly ghetto. The place was a little scary because they had to buzz you in order to get out so you just can’t walk out if something happens.

Back at the apt.

Apt overview

Where we got our water in Europe.

thoughts on prague
Overall I thought Prague had waaay too many tourists which made it lose some of its charm and allure. I think 2 days in Prague would be enough to check it out.

This morning we were heading out to Prague castle. Before heading there, a stop at the pastry shop.

Sign of the shop we went into.

To get to Prague castle, we had to walk across Charles Bridge. The bridge has quite a few Christian symbols.

Our eventual destination

Arch at the start of the bridge

Don’t play in the street hehe.

After crossing Charles Bridge, we crossed another area called Mala Strana. To get to the castle, there is a short-cut path through a series of stairs. Odd enough, there was music playing at this time.

In one of the sewer gutters, somebody put a fake monster with his hand sticking out.

Top of the stairs

We wanted to do a statue pose in the empty crevice in the wall.. but I don’t think it came out as intended…

Guards in front of Prague castle. You can get way closer to them than to the guards in London.

Castle Square

Picture right inside the entrance. We fortunately got student discount to Prague castle. Basically Prague castle is split into 8 major sight seeing attractions your ticket has access to.

St Vitus Cathedral. We would go in later.

Most of the sites didn’t allow camera usage, but this building, Old Palace did allow it.

It had a really long hall

Funky organ

Some painting. As you can tell, the longer this Europe blog goes on, the shorter the descriptions for all historical art hehe.

Another exhibit was an old torture chamber.

We like to smile when we get tortured.

Ok.. some context for this picture. It is basically a statue of a guy with his package out, and everyone was taking a picture of people grabbing it. OF COURSE the guys wanted me to take a picture with it, so I did. Too bad for the guys it came out too dark.

As representative of Prague generally speaking, there were hordes of tourists in the castle.

We had several chance to go outside in the balconies and take a peek.

It really was quite a beautiful view

We would actually go hike to that tower area later

Outdoor view

Next stop was St Vitus’s cathedral.

Just like Notre Dame, some spectacular paintings were inside

Picture of the main hall

While walking around, we saw this ray of sunshine come into the church so we all decided to take pictures with it

I actually got in trouble for wearing my visor right after this pic.

Probably the brightest out of all the pics.

We wanted to do a matrix type picture in the sunlight

Back of the church

It’s easier to describe with a video

Back of the church

Apparently, the church is a popular spot for wedding photo taking.

Top of the church. Unfortunately I think the coolest part of Prague castle was Prague museum. It was really informative, big, but didn’t allow pictures.

Next stop.. lunch. We were going to go to Puffy Palac, a place I researched online which was good, but it was sort of pricy for lunch. Instead we went to some random local restaurant with the mentality “any place the locals go is good.” Boy were we wrong..

The menu. The czech dishes seemed sort of plain generally speaking. Lots of meat + gravy + dumplings.

We asked for water, and he kept giving us bottled water. Each of these freaking glasses was 2 euros! To say at the least, we were quite upset at the cost of the meal. Beer was cheaper than water.

My dish.. a meat cut and dumplings. The difference here is that their dumplings are more like our biscuits.

Rob’s soup.

We next took a hike up Petrin Hill. The park was really nice and green.

We COULD have taken a tram to the top, but instead chose to walk all the way up.

Some weird memorial. What is a little deciving is that you can’t go up the stairs where the statues are

View from the half way point

Some memorial statue thingy.

We took several shortcuts to get to the top

The hike only took about 20-30 mins

On the way up, there were some really weird random caves out of no where

We wanted to do a pretend shot we were seating on a bench without a bench, but instead it looks like we are trying to take a crap.

Croutching tiger, hidden tourist

Ben was trying to play around at the playground, but there were no rings or anything to hold his hand on the chain

Throughout prague.. we generally had problems reading signs. There wasn’t much English in the signs (but for the food menus there were).

So we made it to the top. The highest point in the area. Unfortunately they were charging an arm and a leg to go up the observation tower, so we decided to pass.

An interesting meeting with dogs

We hiked back to our apt to get some rest

One thing we noticed was that every stone had to be laboriously placed in the street. They must have had quite a few peons or slaves to do the work for the king back in the day hehe

Ben wanted to buy his sister a mug which had some Prague signage on it.

For dinner we went to a skewer house

Basically lots of meat on a skewer. Pretty good food, but nothing like awe inspiring.

One of the pictures Rob is smiling and not making a goofy face :)

For our beer choice.. we had Gambrinos. Which is equivalent to our bud light. And who drinks that shit anyways?

At night Ben and Rob went to go play pool while Pete and I went to go check out Old Town Square. Turns out the soccer match was going on.

Even at night.. tons of tourists hehe.

This video was taken earlier in the day

On the way back we saw a car get booted. ouch

We had wireless in our apt, so we shared my phone to get online. I have this cool browser called Skyfire which can view regular webpages on a smartphone

On the way to the train station we saw someone getting arrested which was somewhat interesting.

We took the train at the main station to Schipol Airport which was only around 15 minutes away. Here you see my breakfast and part of a future lunch.

Schipol airport is one of the nicest airports I’ve been to.

Interesting patterns

We pretty much chilled at the airport while for our flight. No problems fortunately at the airport.

Our airplane. A boeing 737.

Upon arriving in Prague, the first thing we had to do is to figure out how to get from the airport to the city. We eventually figured out we had where to buy bus passes and went in the bus. When Rob and I went in the bus, Pete and Ben were stuck outside and our bus was going to leave! In a panic I told the bus driver our friends was outside, and it seemed like he was going to leave without them, but he flagged them to go in the back of the bus. Sort of a scary moment there. Sorry, no pictures for this since this was a bit of a disaster situation. This is a pic of the hallway of an apt we rented.

For our accommodations in Prague, we rented out an apartment flat for 3 days. The apartment was REALLY nice.

Pic of the bathroom

Shower

Living area

Dining area

Bedroom

Video of the apt

The first stop was Old Town Square. There is some famous astronomical clock or something. I forgot the real significance of it.

Arrival in prague video

More pics of the old town area

Janus something memorial. One of the people who helped usher the protestant movement to Prague

Trying to imitate the sign. Unfortunately Ben isn’t a midget so it is sort of hard to pull off.

Its Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars

Architecturally, Prague is quite beautiful in its ability to keep in good condition its really old buildings.

St. Mary behind a church.

Some statue

Inside St Nicolas church. By this time we are sort of church’ed out so we went through it quickly.

Chandelier

I have NO IDEA what this is supposed to be

In old town they had several really expensive shops

One thing we noticed in Prague was that their streets are made up of cobblestone. They makes for painful feet at the end of the day.

Old town is basically like a square block of their town. Here they are preparing for the euro cup matches to be played on tv.

Before coming, I read up on stuff about Prague online, and people recommended to go to this gelato place.

All the flavors

It was SO GOOD. I am constantly seeking the best pistachio gelato.

The next stop would be slightly north to the Jewish Quarter. Unfortunately most of the places were closed due to Jewish holidays.

Jewish town exploring video

Picture of a synagogue

Throughout Prague, they kept advertising the Museum of Torture (which we didn’t go to).

Pic of the Charles Bridges which divides the two sides of Prague

Walking along the river

Chinese restaurant. And I’m happy to say we had no Chinese food in Prague.

The colonel is everywhere! And I’m sure our western exports will make everyone fat.

A pretty cool way of covering up construction.

In front of some music concert hall

In the background is Prague castle

A ufo in the background

Through the Prague trip, people who will remained unnamed kept taking hidden shots of pretty girls on the street.

Another nice pic of the bridge

For Charles River there are only two passes points to cross to the other side, which is called ‘mala strana’ and ‘castle district’

Another western export.. sex in the city

Ben showing off his Czech Crowns. So even though the Czech Republic is in the European Union, it hasn’t done a currency conversion yet. To say at the least, Prague seemed as expensive as western europe anyways with the US dollar’s crappy conversion.

Dinner time! Also when looking through nytimes.com site on Prague, I saw this restaurant (Cerny Kohout) highly rated. At dinner time, we were hella hungry, but I was insistent on going to this particular restaurant.

Good ol’ beer. Cheaper than water. Seriously.

Appetizer course.

Video of first course

Picture of the inside of the restaurant

Prague’s beer of choice. Pilsner Urqell

Main course: Duck confit

Ben’s main course: Veal

Rob’s main course: Lamb

Closer snapshot of the lamb

Closer snapshot of the lamb

Group pic

Main course review. I have to say.. this food was amaaaaaaaazing.

Here is the address if you ever want to go.

At night, we chose to take a stroll along the Charles River.

So while walking along the river, this group of girls kept giggling at us. They eventually asked if we wanted a group pic, and we said sure. We ended up befriended them for the night which was cool. They are all masters students in Indonesia.

One side of the bridge

Gq posing

Video of the Charles River

Every night I would write down my experience of what happened that day into a journal I brought. It ended up being really helpful because later on I would forgot many small details.

The apt had wireless so the guys were able to use Ben’s and my phone to go on.

Pic of the outside.

Found the restaurant!

The restaurant was quite nicely decorated. In fact, I can’t really think of many poorly decorated restaurants in Amsterdam.

A wall of business cards. I put my www.thecheatingcook.com business card up there :)

We ordered family style food. Here we have dumplings in soup.

Some dim sum

The menu

Group picture. I have to say, the food was pretty good, but nothing like ‘mind blowing.’ I think this speaks to the testament of how good the food in California is.

It’s not diet coke.. its ‘coke light’

We had some ice cream desert. It was really really good. I think you can buy this in the korean market.

In the restroom, there were these interesting targets, where when you peed in them, it would spin.

Cops on horses.

Go Holland!

Outside of China town was a little bazaar thing going on.

They mainly had crap in it.

Afterwards we went into some bar to watch the French Open finals. Evidently, tennis wasn’t too popular here because there was only 1 other person watching.

Beer overview

While watching, a cat crawled in the bar.

Video of the kitty

An interesting sign in dutch and chinese

A cover of a newspaper. As you see here, the US presidential elections trumps all local politics apparently.

Amsterdam is strongly a biking city, evidenced by the zillions of bikes you see in this bike parking lot.

Bikes, bikes, and more bikes.

Picture of the tram that runs around the city. It wasn’t quite useful to us since we walked around most of the city.

Beware of pickpocketers sign.

Fastfood in a vending machine. I remember seeing a lot of this in Tokyo.

A beer listing menu. As you can see here, they list the percentages of each beer. 12% is quite a big percentage.

We generally were walking around looking for a flea market area afterwards. But we would first pass through a rich area.

Rich part of Amsterdam

The flea market actually closed by the time we got there, but the sun was in a really nice position for us to take some pictures.

Rob

Peter

Dan

Laws of gravity temporarily suspended giving Ben a hard time.

Curiosity killed the cat…

Afterwords we went to de zotte bar which was a recommendation from the bartender from the night before.

It was a very nice and quaint bar. With 206 beers!

We would spend some time here just drinking and relaxing. At 5pm haha. Nice to live up the European lifestyle.

Group pic.

A really good beer. With a 10 week fermentation process.

Duivel.. another heavy beer.

Afterwords, we went walking around.

In europe, many of the canals are quite dirty (like the Seine river), but beautiful towards sunset and at night. I think the exception to this would be Venice.

Hrm.. who is red here..

While walking around, Peter was hungry for some french fries so we got some at this eatery. Also, there was some British guys outside trying to persuade us to go in a club. We were talking with them quite a bit, and I think we got one in trouble for talking too much to us (not doing his job).

The official flag of Amsterdam.

Beware of.. red carpets?

All three of us were suddenly struck with fobiseizures.

Advertising for soccer.

After a relaxing afternoon, we got some Lebanese food near our hotel.

It was quite an interesting shop. They had the old school California and a Wisconsin license plate hanging in side. It’s like.. wtf.. Wisconsin?

A possessed rob.

A bad Carls Jr. ad ripoff.

Mr. sleepy head. Next stop.. prague!

Overall… I think Amsterdam was a pretty cool city, but probably would be a city I wouldn’t come back to. In retrospect I might have planned for 2 days instead of 3, but it was nice having the third day being a very relaxing day.

The sites in Amsterdam are a bit different where they don’t allow photos in many of the exhibits. Whether this is because of the Internet or otherwise is unknown.

Photos are nice, but sometimes experiences are etched into our heads through memory. The opportunity to be there writes a memory in my head that sometimes only surfaces through a relevant conversation.

To me, that is what watching a live band is like in person. Most of the time, you would think that the music on a cd and what is played live would somewhat be the same. But for a good band, this is so far from the case. Some things can never be replicated in a cd.

I am fortunate enough to have watched all three of my favorite bands in person: Coldplay, Maroon 5, and John Mayer. This is my second time seeing Coldplay while the others I have only seen once. For this concert, I got floor tickets, 19 rows away from the front stage.

I have to say that this experience compared my first Coldplay concert was very different. Last time, we were way up the nose bleeders, and the entertainment quality seemed to be a lot better. The first concert seemed a lot more splashy with some really well choreographed events (balloons coming down from the ceiling and popping with gold graffiti). At the time X&Y was my favorite album

This time around, I would have to say that the splashy quality of the concert went way down. I’m not sure if it was intentional or maybe because the Forum doesn’t support an environment like the first concert.

Regardless, I think this concert was all about one thing.. the music.

Coldplay started off pretty much playing their entire new Viva La Vida cd. The first thing that struck me while singing along with the crowd was that most of their songs lacked a ‘karaoke feel’.

When seeing Maroon 5, I remember singing almost the entire time. Pretty much all of their songs are karaoke friendly.

In this concert, I didn’t know a lot of the lyrics. But it really didn’t matter. When you feel the music pulsating through your body, you know you are feeling it.

Something I’ve always wondered is ‘how do concerts affect me?’ Some things in life are pretty clear, like if you reading certain books you can achieve a degree of self-realization.

But a concert I think allows unbridled expression. For about 2 hours you don’t care what other people are thinking of you and how dorky you look jumping up and down. At the end of the day, it’s all about the love and the music.

And maybe to make this world a better place, that’s something we need more of.

Shandiz and I went to Francos in Cypress for some Italian food.

Shearwater opening

Us really happy in the floor section, row 19

Chris Martin REALLY close.

And of course the obligatory video.

Tuesday is better than Monday..

To start off our day, we would go to an Indonesian restaurant the waitress the night before recommended to us. Here you see Heienken Brewery which is near our hotel.

The restaurant we ended up going to.

For lunch, they had special combination specials. As you can see, it is quite pricey for lunch.

Picture of the place mat

Rob and Pete ordered the combination plate while Ben and I ordered a single dish.

Our goal at almost every restaurant is to try a new beer. This beer is umm.. I forgot.

Remember.. in europe, water often costs money, and coke costs more than beer in many places.

The place was decorated very ‘orange’ which is the color of the Netherlands according to a commenter on one of my other blog entries.

We walked down an expensive shopping street after eating, then heading to Rijks Museum. Hmm.. I wonder if its open.

Rijks Museums unfortunately did not allow any pictures to be taken inside.

The museum was quite an amazing one. It detailed much of dutch history, and ended the gallery with the spectacular Nightwatch paining.

This painting was simply amazing to see in person. It was at least 10 feet wide by 10 feet tall. I’m happy Ben was there because he would talk a lot about the little nuances of the painting such as lighting, color, detail, etc.

Outside of the museum, we ran into an “I amsterdam” sign.

I am amsterdam video.

These two people here were trying to swoon this girl. I think it was working hehe.

(Picture choreographed courtesy of Robert :)

r for ‘rob’

These were the guys swooning the girls hehe.

Next stop.. Anne Frank’s house. The real one this time.

Yet another place not allowing photos. The house was quite cool. It is basically a walking educational tour with many media spots where you can learn about how they hid Anne Frank’s family and the different people involved.

Anne Frank’s house had a really weird requirement of wearing your backpacks in the front. Eh?

Another weird restroom.

There are no starbucks in Amsterdam at all, but there are quite a few subways.

More canal madness.

It started POURING during lunchtime, so we found some refuge in a sandwich shop

Sandwich video review

I ordered ‘dutch meat’

Open wide :)

My lunch. (Dutch meat).

Fortunately for us, nobody got pick pocketed (we were wearing money belts)

A condom store we passed by

It was closed so we just took pictures outside.

They made little figurines out of condoms.

We walked by red light district during the day, and it pretty much resembled any regular street. Some guy decided to take a dip in the canal, and immediately got arrested by police.

At night, Ben saw a pool place, so we spent the rest of the night chilling there.

Ben explaining snooker

We were playing on the extra long tables. Ben was a great asset in giving us shooting tips and teaching us snooker.

Rob giving me some pointers on the shot.

Some cool pics with different camera settings.

Ben shooting with a bridge.

More beers to sample.

I hope the paper doesn’t rotate on itself hehe.

Again, like other bars in Amsterdam, each glass has its own beer.

Ben shooting with an extra long cue

Some new friends we befriended that night.

Ah our bartender Fabian, such an awesome guy. We learned quite a bit from our conversations from him. We learned that the red light district used to be a chinese area, that college in Amsterdam is really easy, and that he doesn’t like french people haha. He recommended us to an awesome bar the next day.

Overview of the pool bar

Some night canal shots.

Walking back to the hotel.

The weather in Amsterdam was considerably warming than Paris.

Upon getting out, the first thing to do would be to drop our stuff off our hotel. Unfortunately it took a little longer for us because I wrote down the wrong address on one of the papers.

One thing to immediately get used to was the excessive amount of letter in the dutch language.

Amsterdam is basically laid out in a circular grid with a bunch of canals creating concentric circles.

The water actually is quite murky though, like the Seine River.

Simply walking around in Amsterdam is quite an experience. It is like EVERYTHING is coming out of you from everywhere. There are tons of bikers as well as cars coming out of drive ways.

The first thing I noticed was the gay friendliness of the city. All the friendly establishments have flags on top.

Another observation we noticed is a lot of ‘orange’.

Orange apparently is one of the official colors of Amsterdam?

And of course, what is Amsterdam without its legalized drugs? Whenever you walk by these shops or coffee shops, you can totally smell weed coming out like no other.

Mellow yellow haha.

We were looking for a place to eat for lunch, and we passed by this place initially and eventually ended up going back on Ben’s suggestion that we find a local place.

So we kept asking all the locals if they spoke English, and later on found out that they ALL do. We asked some people next to us what was good and they said that the croquettes are the best in town here. They also suggested vleiss (turkey?) with peanut butter.

Picture of the menu

Intro video into the restaurant

Roast beef review

Warm vleiss. I ‘hope’ its turkey haha.

We began a Rick Steve’s guided city tour walk (its the tour book we had).

As you can see here they have their own dedicated bike lines everywhere.

In one of the center plazas they had a mock beach scene created.

It is sort of odd to see a beach scene created when this is right in your own backyard back at home.

Pretty lamp post

A big shopping center. By this point, we pretty much have veered from the guidebook tour and are just checking out random things at this point.

Another canal shot.

We saw some French kids in town and we wanted to do a French cheer we learned in Roland Garros, but we never ended up doing it.

Picture of an outdoor cafe.

And of course in Europe, you can get absinthe.

In the canals, you would see boats regularly sail through.

As you see here, there is a hook on top of the building where you can load things into your apt.

We were looking into this one house, and the guy inside said, “Are you looking for Anne Fronk’s house?” (in a heavy Dutch accent). We were like “what?” and he was like, “Anne Fronk, Anne Fronk!”. We were like ohhhh you mean “Anne Frank!” He led us down through this stair case which eventually led to a dead alleyway. He eventually fessed up saying he played a prank on us telling us that Anne Frank’s house was actually across the street. The guy was actually in some type of real estate and I guess was really bored.

More Disneyland type photos.

I’m guessing this guy smokes hehe.

What we eventually learned (aside from this sign being upside down) is that each bar specializes in one beer. So here you see Amstel.

The real Anne Frank house. The line was sort of long so we decided to come back the next day.

Taking a well deserved break.

A gay information point. I went in asking questions on the layout of the town, if everyone speaks English (they do because they learn since grade school), and good bars and restaurants to go to. We would eventually take one of his suggestions later for dinner.

An explicit picture, but an example of the liberalness of Amsterdam.

A store in the major shopping center. Nothing to do with gay stuff apparently.

Another gay friendly establishment.

All coffee shops are supposed to have some registered stuff in front to show if it is legal or not. I’m guessing that means there are some unauthorized coffee shops out there. Oh yea, coffee shops mean they serve weed.

More examples of crazy street signs.

What is interesting about Amsterdam is that there are no Starbucks in the city center anywhere. Instead we went until Bagels and Beans.

This was outside of our hotel.

Another fascinating thing is how close cars park to the canal. I can totally imagine a car going off into the canal by accident.

A pool bar. We would go here the next day.

In their mailboxes you would see “NEE” and all these listings. We were guessing it only allows certain types of mail through.

A sign near the gay information point.

In a city such as Amsterdam, it was quite odd to see a Christian Bookshop.

They sold weed starter kits in the open streets.

Public restrooms.

Throughout the city there was quite a lot of construction going on.

More spiky bars

Playground

Our hotel. We found it by looking through tripadvisor and doing searches on the Internet. No air conditioning, but it had a private bathroom which was nice.

Our room even had its own sink.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, the French Open Semis were starting.

For dinner, we took up the suggestion from a guy in the gay information point.

Specials.

Rob enjoying his beer.

I ordered lamb with an apricot glaze and cous cous.

Another interesting thing about the beer there was that each beer has its own glass.

My meal

Food review

Perspective of the area

The night was quite beautiful. The sun was still setting at 10:30pm which always was trippy for us.

Afterwards we went to the red light district. They don’t allow pictures in the actual district so we took it at the far end.

So if you want through the red light district, you see a bunch of women in the window tapping to lure you in. According to the other guys a lot of the women were hot hehe. The district really is only about 2 blocks long.

Later I wanted to go hit up some gay establishments. This place seemed like everyone was old so we went to the second place.

At the second gay bar, Ben was open to having a drink with me, and the bartender suggested Grolsch Cranberry Rose which was ‘vunderfal’. IT ended up being the best beer on the trip! As you also see here, we used money belts in Amsterdam.

On the pastry hunt, we saw an exposition out which talked about a lot of the political events around the world.

We ended up going to two shops. One sandwich place and the other one a panini place. We saved the sandwiches for the road.

My “blue steele” zoolander pose. After eating some pastries, we headed to Celio where I bought some pants and a nice long sleeve shirt. What was interesting was that I was stopped twice in the store by people asking where I got my gray track jacket from (my favorite one from express). It’s nice to know that you are wearing something that even the Parsians like fashionably.

When coming to Roland Garros, we sat at the practice courts, and guess who we see? Rafael Nadal 5 feet away!

His practice partner

Nadal up close video.

Picture of us at the practice court.

After watching Nadal for a while, I wanted to take a picture with me in the background with Nadal hitting so I moved over to the other side of the court where I took this picture.

Rob took a picture of me from the other side here.

While sitting on the other side, the two kids to the left of me in this picture starting speaking to me really quickly in French. I replied with “parlez vous anglais?” and then they started speaking to me in English. Looks like they wanted Nadal’s autograph when he was done, so I immediately took out some Roland Garros material. I think only the kids had the foresight that they might get an autograph.

Nadal actually signed his shirt he was wearing and gave it to someone.

Spoils of victory…

Yes!

Pointing to my only favorite tennis player out there.

Before heading out to the main match we watched a little bit of the girls quarters.

They’d kick my ass any day.