Roland Garros

Well I had an awesome day on Tuesday at the French Open. We went on down there at 10am, and it was pretty overcast, and the weather was looking a little threataning. In the French tradition of beauracracy there was a six step process just to get inside. Once we finally did, it was pretty cool. I was with a couple of Frenchmen myself, and there was a young Frenchmen playing on Court 3, so we headed over to see him. Being the French Open and a Frenchman playing, the court was overflowing with supporters but we managed to grab ourselves courtside seats, in the back corner of the court.

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After 5 games it started to piss down with rain, and play was suspended for about 90mins. As you can see below

The rain cleared around 1pm, and we headed back to the court to see the French guy win in straight sets.


After that we went for a wander around, saw a few old players (like Ille Natise among others) and some other players warming up (here is Andy Murray)


This chick was playing doubles (and pretty attractive, no idea who she was)



Then we went down to see young Aussie Bernard Tomic, (who got absolutely smashed) and was having a bit of a running battle with the umpire during the match, over his sore leg. We had great seats right behind the umpire, there were a few aussies in the crowd, but mostly the crowd were cheering on the German.



As you can see on the scoreboard he got pumped



Had a little wander around afterwoods, saw Roger Rasheed, and caught Sammy Stosur, and briefly saw Jelana Dockic (who was listed in the programme as Serbian) all in all a great day, and then a very long night at some of our local drinking establishments here in the Butte Aux Cailles.

Versaille

Last Sunday we took ourselves out to the Palace of Versaille, (which of course is where they signed the treaty after WWI) and thats how I know of the place. There was nothing in or around the Palace or grounds that talked about the signing of the treaty. The palace was basically an homage to all things that were decadent about a whole bunch of Frenchmen called Louis. (Louis the XIII, XIV, XV & XVI ) they all lived there and the place is freakin massive. The gardens are pretty nice, well manicured and huge.

(This painting is called "The Feast of Simon")




Yes there were a lot of people there (like seriously everywhere) and it was freakin hot.

Eurodisney, Paris the City and Bogans

First of all, despite Paris being a nice city full of nice people, its funny the strangest places that you still find some good ol Bogans. I am not talking about French bogans either, I am talking about good ol fashioned Aussie bogans.

Rach and I were in a department store on the Champs-Elysees last Thursday, having a look through the alcohol that was on offer. There was a group of four 20 something people also browsing through the alcohol. One of the guys picked up a six pack of beer off the shelf, and one of the girls grabbed a bottle of vodka and a six pack and turned to the other girl and said, "great, now we just need to go down to the servo and get some ice and we'll be sweet" I closed my eyes, and imagined that I was standing in Woolworths at Penrith Plaza. Paris seemed so far away.






(This is where I will bring the DeLoreon to generate the 1.21 giggawatts to get me back to Oz)


EURO DISNEY



If you love queuing then this is the place for you. Everything is just a massive queue. We queued up for an hour just to get in, all the rides, massive queues, even when you take a "fastpass" that is supposed to prevent queuing, you still queue. Its unbelievable how slow some people could be at the ticket windows. I am no theme park expert (actually yes I am) I am of the opinion that the longer that people are standing out the front waiting to get in, the less time they are spending inside actually spending money (which is what you want Eurodisney!)

After out 65 min wait to get tickets, we finally got inside to enjoy the splendour that was Eurodisney, and my god there were people EVERYWHERE. I had never seen so many people in such a relatively small space in my life. Even walking around was a pain, so many strollers, and a lot of fat american's who were too lazy/fat to walk around the park, getting pushed around by family members in hired wheelchairs. (I kid you not)

French Family Feud

Yes I have discoverd that Family Feud is on in France. Here is the French version on Rob Brough
(Lets face it he is no Broughy)








I am buggered if I know how to pronounce the name of this family.















BONG BONG














This topic is "Things That Vibrate"

2nd Day

Wow, went to the local markets that they have around the corner here twice a week this morning and it was pretty awesome. Soooo much good food, especially fruit and veg, meat and seafood. It smells so good, and tastes even better. I am getting a little concerned that I am going to get pretty fat from all of the delightful food. There is some pretty weird animals that they dont mind eating here.

This afternoon we headed over to the Eifel Tower, its was pretty touristy. If I have one more person come up to me and try to sell me some stupid Eifel Tower nick nack, I am going to punch them and smear their nose across their face. There were almost as many people there trying to sell crap, as there were actual tourists wandering around. It was a little bit wet, so we didnt head up the tower today (will leave that for another time). (Have a look at this pic here, its a very interesting juxtaposition.) -------------------->

We randomly walked around town, and viewed ourselves a typical French protest that was going on. There were a couple of hundred people occupying a road outside an important building, chanting and just generally being in the way. There were also about 100 cops hanging around with all of their riot gear, looking particularly scary, we watched for a bit, but alas, nothing exciting came about.

Then to amuse ourselves we thought we would spend 5 minutes sitting watching the traffic go around a particularly busy roundabout. Sounds a little boring I know, but it was very entertaining. The French, with their disregard for authority, have decided that even having lanes marked on the road is far to authoritarian and that in the true spirit of freedom, people should be able to make their own way around. Without the fancy "rules" or "lanes" that are opressing so many of us in our cars every day, the French are showing the world just how egalitairan the road can be. Throwing away the shackles of oppression and with little regard for anyone else on the road we witnessed a lot of tooting horns, raised fists and general gesturing but sadly no accidents.

Travel and First Day

Well,

I had the worst trip ever, like the worst 24hrs EVER. First of all, I spent the 1st 14 hours to Abu Dhabi stuck next to someone who already managed to take up more than their whole seat on the plane (and a little bit of mine) and didn't mind a chat. Whilst I don't mind a chat on the plane, I am not generally interested in your opinion on anything, especially on how loud the children are on the plane, particularly when you are going to snore loudly later on.

Anyway, needless to say I did not get 1sec of sleep on the 14 hours to Abu Dhabi. After a 2 hour stop there, I had another 8 hours to Paris, which was a much more pleasant trip, and I actually managed to sleep (a whole 3 hours) on this flight, so when I arivved in Paris at 7:30 am, I had managed to have about 3 hours sleep in the preceeding 30 hours. Je suis fatigue.

Thankfully, Rachel made it to the airport, and despite my extreme tirdness, I was far to keen and enthusiastic to want to have too much sleep, and I wanted to get out and explore the town. That being said, I still needed a wee lie down. After a trip in from the airport on the train, and then onto the metro, we arrived in the lovely 13th Arrondisment, which will be our home for the next 3 months.

Its very quaint, with nice cobblestone streets, and older type buildings and lots of cool little shops and boutiques. I couldnt sleep for too long, and we headed out on the metro into town for some lunch. We had lunch at a nice French bistro, and wandered around a bit, and then jumped on the metro to head back home, as I was starting to feel the effects of lack of sleep. When we got home, I climbed straight into bed, and was out like a light, next thing I knew it was 4 hours later, and time for dinner.

I picked a good day to come, as that particular evening they had this thing that they have once a month over here well all of the museums and gallaries are open at night and are free. We decided to take ourselves off to the Louvre as I have heard some terrible stories of people queuing for hours to get inside. When we got there there were a hell of a lot of people there, but we went straight in, and started wandering around. Sadly there is just so much to see, and my tiredness combined with my short attention span meant that we quickly wandered through everywhere (mind you it still took 2 1/2 hours) but we saw all of the important stuff.