Roland Garros

Yesterday's post of the translator and maman produced an obvious request for a Tuileries photo featuring grass and flowers. Despite the gravel surface conditions of yesterday's photo, providing grass and flowers is absolutely no problem. This photo also continues the whole flowering shrub theme.And only a couple of steps further along here are some flowers to go with the grass and this time you get a sign identifying some sort of upcoming garden show.These were both taken on the morning walk which means that they are extraordinary views of the Tuileries, seen by only a very, very tiny proportion of all of the people who ever take photos of the Tuileries. These photos show the flowers and grass but they show no other human beings in a public park which for most of the day will be absolutely c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g with way too many people.

The morning walk continued on the far side of the Seine which took us past Musee D'Orsay. The museum has some interesting sculpture just standing around outside, like this rhinoceros.The picture I posted yesterday of the first view we ever had of Paris was disappointing to me in that there were so many cars and vans that interfered with my enjoyment of the objects pictured. I retook the picture on the morning walk when no one else was around.Right next to where we took that photo we passed in front of the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume. The building itself was originally built as a site for the king's tennis court. It is now a museum of contemporary art. My picture of the gallery includes a tennis player peering through the front doors.We then went out to Roland Garros. We wanted to scout out the route and get a lay of the land. The actual tennis tournament doesn't start until tomorrow but today was children's day. Children were admitted free but we had to pay. We did pay and went inside to discover a much larger crowd than we expected.

There was an exhibition match on the center court of the main stadium. The players were Gael Monfils, the top ranked French player, against another Frenchman. The match was the top French player on his home court with his home crowd in support. It was only an exhibition but M. Monfils had the rapt attention of an overflow crowd. There were French people sitting in the aisles.
I like this photo taken during the warm up because it shows the French crowd enjoying themselves with a pretty much complete stadium wave. Even Mrs. Smith participated.

As we were making our way towards the exit a young Chinese woman with a microphone stepped out of the crowd and asked me if I spoke English. Since I in fact do speak English I replied in the affirmative. She asked me if I would appear on camera and led me over to her cameraman and proceeded to conduct an interview. I answered the usual questions about where I was from, how we had come to be at the tournament and who I thought would win. She then dropped the bomb asking me if I knew any Chinese tennis players. I know about the two women who have recently had excellent results but had to admit that I do not know their names. She asked whether I thought that a Chinese person could some day win the tournament to which I responded that I expected that a Chinese person WOULD win the tournament, citing the fact that the Chinese have been successful in the other international sporting endeavors they have attempted and that I assumed the same would be true for tennis.

Who knows, I may soon be interviewing for a position with ESPN-China.