Paris

Paris is a big place with lots of people and lots of sights especially when you're standing with the gargoyles at the top of Notre Dame.

See you soon.

K & M

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Moving Day

Our last move today. We're off for our last three nights at Le Meridien Etoile, a deal we found on Travelzoo. Hopefully it has a little more room than the one we've been in for the last five nights.
We did our last day at Roland Garros on Friday. We saw Jelena Jankovic easily beat her third round opponent in two sets and then we watched Youzhny go down in an emotional match against Montanes. The second set was probably the best we saw during our three days. Mary also got to see her heart throb, Tommy Haas, play one set of doubles.
In the evening we went to the Louvre. We spent most of our time in the Denon and Richilieu wings. It is an enormous place! We saw The Mona Lisa, but Mary wasn't too impressed. I couldn't get a good picture but I got a good picture of the people taking a picture of the Mona Lisa. We saw Vermeer and the Venus de Milo.
The next day we went off to the Chateau du Versailles and after spending an hour and 15 minutes in line we got into the "chateau"...decadence to the nth degree. No wonder the people had Louis and Marie guillotined. Pretty impressive stuff though and in the gardens we were there for the fountains, as they don't have them on all the time.
In the evening we went to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. So, first the state decadence and then the church decadence. A very beautiful and peaceful place, though. The stained glass, for me, is second only to Marc Chagall's in the Frauen Kirche in Zurich.
We ate in a little pizzeria with the Barcelona/Man U European Cup final on. The waiter was very much into the game. Then the metro back and a little rose wine night cap. C'est finis.

K & M

Location:Rue de la Ferme,Boulogne-Billancourt,France

Jour deux a Roland Garros

A lot of today was spent recovering from the heat and length of yesterday. We got there for the first match on Court 3 which was Florian Mayer against Alejandro Falla. Falla won it in four. We also got to watch Mardy Fish for a few games and a few games of Baghdatis' match. We felt that we should get over to our assigned court where we saw the last few games of Verdasco finishing off Malisse. After that we watched Daniel Nestor/Max Myrni take Gael Monfils/Ouhanna and beat them in two sets. There was a small Canadian contingent at the match including Davis Cup captain, Martin Larendeau. I was feeling kind of lousy by this point and it was getting cold so we returned to our hotel where I crashed for a couple of hours and Mary went out to get some food and drink but still managed to fit in a little clothes shopping.
We haven't decided whether we'll do our 3rd day at tennis yet. Not a lot of good matches on the outer courts, but of course lots of good ones on Court One where we no longer have tickets. Oh, well, the luck of the draw. Maybe we'll just start our exploration of Paris.

K & M












































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Location:Rue Castéja,Boulogne-Billancourt,France

Roland Garros

Our day was pretty much taken up with tennis. We got to Roland Garros for the matches starting at 11:00 am. We strolled the massive grounds with all the people (lots of kids as there's no school on Wednesdays). We watched Tipsaravic's match for two sets and then we took in a lot of doubles for the rest of the day. The lines for the singles matches tended to be very long so we avoided them. We saw Dolgopolov and Malisse win their match and we saw Isner and Querry lose theirs. We looked in on a Kivitiva/Stakovsky match and watched a set of Tipsarovic and Troicki playing doubles. After a beer and pizza we ended the day watching Jarko Nieminnen and his partner lose their doubles match. Tomorrow we have Court 1 seats where we'll see 2 women's singles and 2 men's singles. It was a very hot day and fun just wandering around the grounds.

Take care.
K & M






































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Location:Rue Castéja,Boulogne-Billancourt,France

Canucks

We just heard about the Canucks big overtime win! Go, Canucks!
When we were at the Nice tennis open we saw this picture in the crowd...it's becoming a world wide movement!
Check out the guy with the blue t-shirt in the middle...you might have to enlarge the picture.



Coconuts!

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Arrival in Paris

We got up early this morning and did a final stroll through Arles, catching the main buildings in the morning light and without a lot of people around. We then packed up and walked to the train station. We stopped along the way at Avignon Centre station. Mary had been out of her seat for some time before the stop and still not back when the train started off again, checking things out somewhere. A few minutes later I heard her voice outside our compartment and I was thinking, "Who has she found to talk to now?". She came through the door soon followed by two familiar faces, Maureen and Allan Wooten. They had just finished their week of biking in Provence and were on their way to Dijon, via Lyon. We had a great two hour long visit sharing some of our stories all the way to Lyon where we caught our train to Paris and they waited for their train to Dijon. I tried taking a picture of them with the iPad but you'll see that I haven't quite mastered it yet.

After arriving at our hotel in the Boulogne-Billancourt area, close to Roland Gaross, but a fair distance from Paris central, we strolled around checking things out. Mu h cooler here at night than in Arles, Nice and Avignon.

We've looked at the schedule of play for tomorrow and hope to see Janko Tipsarovic play. Unfortunately our Canadian, Milos
Raonic has already lost and Wosniak is playing Wosniaki on one of the courts that our tickets won't take us.

C'est la vie!

K & M


















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Arles and the Camargue

I'm getting kind of lazy with the blog. We've had a couple of great days in Arles. Lots of stuff to see but not as many tourists. We found three great restaurants and visited lots of Roman stuff.

Yesterday we did a half day trip to the Carmague, an area where the Rhone meets the Mediterranean. We saw the white horses, the bulls and one flamingo. The interesting part was that our guide only spoke French. Needless to say we keyed more on the sights than the words.

We're on our way to Paris tomorrow for our final eight days. I'll include some pictures from the days I didn't blog, including our day at the Nice tennis tournament.

Hope all is well. Take care.

K &M
























































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Location:Rue Diderot,Arles,France