Paris 2009

Okay, so the blog didn't quite die out completely. I realized I didn't have a whole lot of new material to post so on Sunday night, while watching French Open highlights, I looked at Janae and said, "Wanna go to Paris and catch the French Open finals?" Since we have done this trip 3 other times it took about 1 second for my wife to shout, "yeah!" Within 2 hours flights and hotel arrangements were made, and by the next morning tickets to the semis and finals were ordered. Ah, the life of emty nesters.

We left on Tuesday, a scant 36 hours after decided to go. The flight over was easy; LV-SLC-Paris. Delta Biz class seats allowed us to lie down and sleep, watch movies and sleep some more. The Air France flight that went down 2 days prior to our Atlantic crossing didn't worry me (no way 2 planes go down in 2 days - no one is that unlucky), but I did think of those poor folks and the horror they surely experienced.

Wednesday produced some of the best hilarity in months. Usually the day of arrival in far off lands promotes a "sleep of the dead" which is exactly like it sounds. Deep, deep, drool-inducing sleep and when you wake up, you have no idea where you are and if it's 6am or 6pm. Plus, there aren't 4 cats, 2 dogs, phones ringing, iphones pinging, landscapers and pool people wandering around making all sorts of racket - IT. IS. QUIET. HERE.

When we travel we bring A LOT of electronic doohickeys. Since you can NEVER find a plug in a convenient place at a hotel. Janae has a travel cord with 1/2 dozen outlets that always does the trick. Well here at the Marriott Paris Champs-Elysees they will remember us for knocking the power out not once, but twice.

The first incidence where we used our own power converter blew all the power in our room. After the fuses were reset, we used the hotel's converter AND Janae's "Clark W. Griswold" 6 in 1 adapter. Attempting to plug this apparatus in gave Janae the jolt of her life, sent smoke billowing into the air and knocked out all the power - again. But this time when we called the operator, she had to put us on hold since apparently, many hotel guests were calling to say that the power in their rooms went out. Janae and the operator were giggling over this mishap. I heard that the lights of the Eiffel Tower even blinked - The Griswolds got nothin' on us. After re-wiring the room with French approved power converters not only do our iphones and computers charge up, but my Magic Sleep Machine works splendidly. The flux capacitor is now working properly.

Day 2 took us to Roland Garros where we watched tennis in glorious sunshine for 7+ hours. The first order of business was to go pay my respects to Court #2. This is the court we first went to a decade ago on our first trip to RG. We spent a 1/2 hour watching the boys juniors quarterfinals, then it was off to the show courts to watch a myriad of doubles, mixed doubles and womens singles competition.

Thankfully smoking is permitted in public places here and since it drowns out the body odor and too-heavy-on-the-cologne guys, I don't mind it one bit. There were 2 people sitting next to us who apparently fell into their cologne and perfume bottles respectively, before venturing outside to the tennis matches. That bad.

All of Paris would like to see Roger Federer win his 14th grand slam title to tie Pete Sampras and to complete the career grand slam which only a few other men have achieved. Since Pete Sampras was and is so utterly boring, I would like RF to hold the grand slam record. The guy has made it to 20 straight slam semifinals beating the next best streak by 10 yet pundits continue to write about his demise.

Love Paris, love the French - Runyon is French by the way. It was spelled Rongnion back in the day. I'm home.

Stay tuned for more escapades from across the pond.

Au revoir.