French Open Fever [part 2]

This is a continuation of my previous Roland Garros post.

 

Novak…on a roll…

John McEnroe and Mary Carillo! Isn’t it cute that they were childhood friends, then both became tennis studs, and now they are co-sports announcers? 

After Djokovic and Del Potro were done I went to survey the stadium’s food situation.

I wasn’t hungry for lunch yet, so I was scoping out the snack options.  I ended up buying some fruit (really the only vegan choice aside from raw carrot sticks and applesauce), which cost me half my monthly paycheck. 

 

Roland Garros makes Whole Foods look like the 99 cent store.

Something else worth noting, over the course of the day I spent approximately 30 dollars on water alone.  That’s even taking into account the times I refilled my water bottle in the bathroom sink!  I would say it was the hippie in me, making every effort to be green, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I was just doing anything to avoid the crazy steep 6 euro fare!  

So.  The food scene.

 

It was…cheesy.  Put it this way, if you weren’t dairy intolerant, you’d be golden. 

Here’s Laura, thrilled to be using a pamphlet to rake the (unmentioned) cheese off her turkey sandwich.

 

As we were standing in line, I went over and over the menu trying to determine the order that would require the least alterations while also holding me over the best.

Everything had cheese.  Bio wrap?  Cheese.  Salad?  Cheese.  Baguettes.  Cheese.  Even the friggin’ sushi had cheese.

I was at a loss…

Do I spend $$$$ on a ton of vegan snacks that weren’t likely to keep my hunger at bay (carrots, cherry tomatoes, apples, melon) or do I get crafty?

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

All I wanted was a loaf of bread.  Truly.  So in the end, I got the ham and cheese baguette and removed the ham and cheese.  It sounds horrible I know, but like I said before, when it comes to French food, you DON’T dare alter a dish. 

Far more effective to make changes to your own food post-order than try and convey in a foreign language why you think your version of the menu item would be better.

 

This plan backfired in my face, though.  Big time.  I peeled off the cold cuts to find butter caked into the bread.  FML.

What did I do?  Distraught and tired and hungry and on the verge of a breakdown, I just ate it.  Can you tell just how desperate I was at this point?  Seriously.  You could have told me Justin Timberlake was off the market and I wouldn’t have even blinked.  Things were out of my hands and I had pretty much thrown in the towel.  Now, this doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the rest of the day.  I came for tennis (not food) damn it!

Regardless of the butter aftermath, the best memory I have from the day is Alene’s sunburn.  I should have taken a photo.  It was epic. 

 

After lunch we watched Mardy Fish dominate.  We were so close.  It was also cool to be  cheering on an American.  There were so many peeps from the US in the crowd.

Do you have an ace?  Go Fish!

Next we headed back to the big stadium to see the progress of the next match.  It was two no names, so we watched the (pretty intense) Gasquet match on the big screen in the plaza instead.  It was a nail biter for sure.

 

And then since there was still quite a while until the Wozniaki match we decided to meander to the other end of the courts.

Alene and I cheered on Li Na for a bit which was cool since she went on to win the French Open.  She was on an outer court and there weren’t many people watching at all.  At that point we weren’t as focused on the lower seeded Na because Wozniaki was the #1 seed, but clearly we should have given her more credit.  When we went back to the stadium, the no name girls were still battling it out.  Waiting for Wozniaki was getting tedious…and since all the matches scheduled in the main grandstand were done for the day, I was getting nervous they’d switch her over to that court.  Sure enough, the Roland Garros officials decided to do just that.

 

BOO!  That was the stadium that only Laura had tickets to.  I know they wanted to fit all the matches in before the sun went down, but I felt ripped off.  Seeing Wozniaki was what I had been looking forward to the ENTIRE DAY.

 

Laura was feeling pretty good at that point, seeing as her grandstand ticket would come in handy yet again.  She left for the grandstand and we stayed to watch the random girls battle it out.  And battle it out they did…It went on and on and on and on.  There were two injury time-outs requiring the medics to tend to the players. 

Even though most of the stadium had emptied, the people that were remaining were suddenly starting to get into the match.  The players were certainly pouring their hearts and souls into it.  I think that because they were wild card entries in the tournament they had even more to play for…or maybe they had less to lose and thus more to gain.  Or maybe the crowd was just excited to have a seven set tie break sitch.  I was.

 

Funny thing was, Wozniaki’s match was over in quick three sets so we were out at the same time as Laura.  With no more tennis to see, it was time to head home.

 

Goodbye French Open!  [You can see the Eiffel Tower in the way way background]

 

At this point my GI system was so out of whack I couldn’t ignore it any longer.  I won’t go into it, but suffice it to say, I was miserable.

We stopped at Monoprix on the way home so I could get mega groceries (for the flight home the next day and dinner that night).

Even though my stomach was in KNOTS after the butter lunch incident, I was still starving.  Even though I really did not want food, I knew I had to eat. 

I got two seaweed salads, which I added to a regular salad (minus the tuna and olives).

 

It wound up being a halfway decent meal.  I saved the carrots and apple for the next day’s travel back to the US.  Then I got to work packing everything back up.  It was bittersweet really.  I felt miserable physically, and emotionally I was sad to leave my sister, but also really anxious to get back to Kyle.  The end of my vacation definitely brought a bizarre mix of feelings. 

That night I slept horribly and my GI system was still a mess for all three flights home.  But I made it home…and when I look back, all I remember are the hilariously entertaining adventures.  That’s the way hindsight works.  Anything that seemed at all negative while in Paris is now simply a funny story.