My trainor is from Melbourne and I asked if there was something she’d like me to bring her back from ‘home’. She mentioned this salt she loves and even had at her wedding as favors. I asked her to show it to me on her phone so I would know what to look for. When she pulled it up, it went straight to Amazon! Could you imagine if I brought that home to her and she said, “thank you but I get regular deliveries of this from Amazon”? Not that she would say that, but there isn’t much that isn’t available online anymore.
It’s now time for tennis so we go to the tram stop and a city worker tells us they are on strike until 2:00pm! Okay, so now what? He tells us the walk along the river is only about 20 minutes and it’s so pretty. Sounds good...except it’s 101 degrees. Oh well, by the time we find a cab or Uber who are prohibited from bringing us up to the entrance of the arena, we might as well walk. The city doesn’t allow any cars to come close to Rod Laver because they are encouraging the tram...yes, the one on strike!
We arrive in time to grab waters from the ESPN tent and get to our seats. As we sit, even in the shade, I could feel sweat pouring from every crevice in my body. You could wring out my dress. When the wind blew, it was as if a furnace door opened. The woman next to us was so embarrassed because the entire back of her beige pants were soaked, making it look like she peed her pants. As the locals say, “welcome to Melbourne”.
The ladies matches did not disappoint. They battled to the finish line and in the end the American Sofia Kenin will meet the Spaniard Gabine Muguruza. Muguruza has won Majors before but has floundered the last year or two. It’s good to see such a talented player back on her game. Kenin is a fighter and hopefully she will now begin to get the attention she deserves. All eyes have been on 15 year old Coco Gauff but the 21 year old Kenin is the only American still standing in this Open and she deserves profs for that.
Tonight went pretty much as I expected it to. My Roger was not at his best, especially since he had two 5 setters leading up to this semi final. He was not feeling well and just couldn’t beat Novak Djokovic so it was over in 3 sets. I fear one day soon we may hear that Roger is on a farewell tour. He did make it to the semifinals though and that’s something to definitely be proud of at almost 39 years of age.
Tomorrow is our last day in Melbourne. We’ll begin the day with a food tour, something we’ve done in Paris and Rome so we will see how Melbourne measures up.
Then an evening flight back to Sydney. We decided it was less stressful to fly up the night before our flight home.
I'll wrap up this blog tomorrow and give my impressions of our trip as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment