Roland Garros

After the luck we were struck down with on the RER commute to Versailles, our trust in Paris’ train system wasn’t great.  And since Laura would rather self-amputate her defective toes than miss part of a tennis match, we were out of the gate excessively early.  I think Wozniaki herself slept in longer than we did.

Once caffeine and carbs were had, we were off to Roland Garros.

Weee!

Having been to the US Open before, I knew tennis fever was going to hit me the second we stepped into the stadium.  [Who am I kidding!?!  It was all Laura and I could talk about since buying tickets back in February]
Sure enough it was like a wave of excitement fell over us all from the second our tickets were scanned.

But I really need to describe the scanning process in more detail.  We emerged from the subway and followed the tennis rackets on the ground to the stadium…

At that point the line at the gate was already forming which was exciting but problematic as Ethel was still billette-less.

You see, the French Open website was horribly limited and even WITH the English translations, still made minimal sense.  You were required to electronically enter the name of the ticket holder prior to printing out the passes, but then they didn’t actually show the names on the passes…that is, until they were scanned at the entrance gate.

This all sounds fine (and could work in theory if you only bought a single ticket for yourself).  But.  Laura and I had two accounts that we bought multiple tickets with…and as she was without printer access for months leading up to the tourney (hiking Machu Picchu and such), I was in charge of entering in all her data, as well as mine and our friends.  I’m fairly on top of my shiz, but I still got flustered when they all printed out with Laura’s name on them.

Once again, the French seemed to master the art of overcomplicating the most simple of tasks.  Who’da thought scanning a ticket could be so much more difficult than just reading a bar code.  In case you’re confused, that was me being sarcastic.  The ticket situation was stupid.  We had five passes between the four of us and all of them had the same name printed on it.  I freaked at first, thinking I’d somehow managed to put every ticket in Laura’s name and thus she’d be the only one granted admission (with 6 other tickets no less)! [It wasn’t until later that I realized the individual ticket holder’s name only appears when scanned at the stadium] And you had better have your ID on hand because that electronically entered info best match up with the name, birth date, social security number, life plan, etc. on your passport or you’re S.O.L.  This is why Ethel couldn’t use Laura’s extra ticket (she got two so she’d have access to multiple stadiums – but I’ll explain that in more detail later).

The real problem was, we had no way of knowing which names were entered on each ticket since they all said Laura.  Assuming I even did it correctly.  In the end, we all got in, but Ethel was still ticket-less.  🙁  Sadly, the French don’t appreciate scalpers (and put the kibosh on any unofficial ticket sales with the whole scanning thing) so we had to part ways…setting up a meeting point just in case Ethel did manage to get a ticket later in the day.

*Later we found out you can get grounds passes online on the day of, for either 3 pm or 5 pm.*

First things first, we got Laura her official gear.  My sister doesn’t get super amped over many things, but tennis is one of the few exceptions.  She was geeking out of control in Roland Garros.  Literally.  She couldn’t contain herself.  It was hilarious and adorable.

Once she was satisfied with her purchases (plural), we checked out the outer courts for players warming up.

Melanie Oudin!

Shweaty.  She seemed pretty frustrated warming up.  Maybe clay courts aren’t her thang.  They probably messed up her cute Adidas “believe” shoes.

Next up we headed into the stadium for the first match.  Our tickets weren’t actually together, but the stadium wasn’t full so Laura and I got to sit together.  Alene and Ashley were on the opposite side of the stadium though.

Del Potro!  So sexy.

I snacked on an apple and medjool dates that Alene got me the previous day.  Thanks A!  Medjools definitely taste better in a foreign country.

The Del Potro match went on forever.  I stayed to watch it all, but Laura left to go see Djokovic with her grandstand pass.

So why did Laura have two passes while the rest of us had just the one?  Well, like I said, Laura is very into tennis.

*Background story*

One of the advantages of working night shift is the time zone matches up with that of Western Europe.  So when French Open tickets went on sale in France, guess who was up and ready to snatch them up?  Yo!

One of the disadvantages of working night shift is the next day I’m in bed for the daytime hours that most Americans are awake…missing crucial (potentially time sensitive) emails.  Imagine my surprise when I finally woke up and turned on my computer to find my inbox flooded with emails from Laura and Roland Garros.  Oh, and did I mention this was my family/friends (non-junk) email address.

[Email 1] from Roland Garros – Welcome to your new account!
[me] WTF?
[Email 2] from Laura – Urgent!!
[Email 3] from Laura – I can explain!
[me] LAURA!?!?!?!
[Email 4] from Laura – call me when you wake up
[Email 5] from Roland Garros – your French Open e-tickets
[Email 6] from Laura – can you forward that last one to me?
[Email 7] from Laura – and print them out?
[me] I’m gonna kill her!

The reason I was so confused was because the night before I had already purchased us four grounds passes for all the outer courts.  So I had already gotten the confirmation emails at my junk email address.  Well, apparently one mega-hard-to-get ticket (to the grandstand) freed up while I was snoozing and Laura decided to buy it for herself…using my account info.  Only she didn’t know my account info, so she made me a NEW account (with my personal email for family and friends only).  Sweet Lord.  Once that shiz gets out, you’re stuck with an inbox ‘o crap in no time flat.  I seriously wanted to kill her.

In the end, Laura wound up with two tickets…and no black eye (lucky girl).  Combing her billetes granted her access to the entire outer grounds PLUS the main stadium PLUS the grandstand stadium.  FYI, the rest of us only had grounds passes.  But heaven forbid my tennis-obsessed sister restrict her options. [I’m only teasing her out of jealousy since she saw Djokovic and we didn’t]

So back to Del Potro.  It was an awesome one!  Close to the end…and very exciting for the French crowd.

After the completion of the match (which he won), I went to survey the food scene.  That’s a whole post in and of itself though…