Day 6 - A day in the city and the Aussie Open at night

Day 6 - Hingis
Originally uploaded by photog larry.

we decided to spend the day in the city and explore for a bit, given that we had the tennis to go to at night. we headed to the carlton gardens, where we had a look around, took some pictures in the cool park with the kids. why don’t we have cool parks like this in Toronto?

we continued to walk into the downtown area, where Linda was going to try to meet up with a partner from work who had moved to Melbourne. had some trouble finding the place, since the map that we had gotten off the internet indicated the building was between the wrong streets! anyways, we finally found it, and Linda attempted to get some time with the partner. but she couldn’t meet that day because of some meetings. oh well.

on a side note, Linda had borrowed some shoes from debra, given that she didn’t want to wear her stinky flip flops into a partners office, and she hadn’t brought any dress shoes with her to OZ. good choice. at any rate, once it was clear that she wouldn’t be meeting up, the heels came flying off, and the stinky diesels back on.

so it was around lunch time now, and we decided to try to grab some food, before doing some shopping. we stumbled upon a string of Vietnamese restaurants along swanston street and decided to check out the local pho scene. the difficulty was in choosing which restaurant to go for. I noticed that one of the restaurants had some ghetto pictures on the wall, and that the chopsticks and utensils were in little canisters on the table. I thought to myself, a true sign of authenticity – self serve utensils. so we hopped in and grabbed a table. suffice it to say, that my theory was thoroughly squashed. the pho was not so good, and it was slllloooooowwww service (very unlike any authentic asian restaurant at peak lunch times). so we left very unsatisfied with our meal.

we headed into Chinatown, just to check it out. I wheeled and dealed for a cell phone case for my phone, and we stumbled upon a food court in one of the alleyways…PACKED with Chinese people…..damn….that’s authenticity…..oh well, we missed out. we continued on our way and headed for the shopping arcades, on a mission to get me some sunglasses. went into sunglass hut, and as per usual, the pricess were high. but they had some styles that I liked…kept that in mind as we went into one of the local department stores. I found a bunch of mid range sunnies. so the dilemma began, on whether to splurge on the expensive but good pair, or the half decent, cheaper, but not really cheap pair. complicating this matter was the fact that I still had yet to know whether I had actually LOST my sunglasses in the airport, or whether I had just left them at home. so I decided eventually on the cheaper pair. Subsequently, I found these to be even cheaper (in quality) than expected, and they began to take the brunt of my abuse – being sat on and dropped numerous times. Being at home now, I can also confirm that I have indeed lost my good pair of sunglasses. more expense leakage….

after this, we took the free city tram home, to get ready for the tennis.

so we got to the tennis, and found out that the matches that we would be watching in rod laver would be hingis versus stosur (an Australian), and after that, tommy haas versus roger federer. some pretty marquee match ups, considering it was still only Monday of the second week of the tournament. given my experience at the US Open, where my seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium were so high that I could barely see the specs of the players, I expected our back row seats at rod laver to be even worse. but I was pleasantly surprised when we sat down, that our seats were not all that far out, and that the stadium was fairly small. obviously, the crowd was pretty boisterous in their support of the Australian. but I’ve always liked hingis, since she is small and doesn’t play a power game like the other “big boneded” girls…so when hingis started mashing the Australian in the first set, I’d cheer, along with a few boisterous swiss fans in the crowd. near the end of the first set, with the hingis up 2 breaks, and cruising through the match, I decided to yell out during a break in the action “Cmon Martina, FINISH HER!” (even though it was only the first set!), which was met with a silenced by some ohhhs , ahhhs, and hissing…..sweet!…..the swiss guy in front of me even smiled and laughed.

At any rate, this may have even pumped up the Australian a little bit, as she made a match of it before succumbing in straight sets to martina.

another strange thing about sitting at the top of the stadium was that we had some box seats directly behind us. they appeared to be the standard boxes, a few couches, some TV’s, and a kitchen. so the box behind us had a concierge lady serving them dinner, which is fine and great. good for them. but THEN, she starts washing the dishes in the sink…I’m here, trying to watch tennis, where the crowds are silent out of respect for the sport, and this lady is clink clanking in the back with the plates and forks….anyways, its not a complaint, but I found it very odd. perhaps they should take the dishes to the back, or wait for a suitable point at which to wash the dishes, rather than doing it not only in front of the box seat holders whom they are servicing, but also everyone else in the stadium!

then came the federer match, and you could sense the excitement in the air. tommy haas is always a crowd favourite, and federer is already the best player in his era (yes, even better than hairy Sampras). so we sat and watched a very decent match, with some great shots by both players. as the match progressed, since it was monday, many patrons started to head to the exits, having watched enough, and needing to get to work the next day. I guess I can’t really blame them. so you could start to see patches develop, especially in the lower bowl area….my eyes started to light up as I tried to find a place where we could sneak down. security didn’t seem too tight, so it didn’t seem like it would be an issue. eventually, we did head down, and got some great seats, behind the baseline in the lower bowl. unfortunately for us, we happened to be in a area where there was some sort of security issue, and there were some security people going back and forth, whispering to each o0ther, and then talking into their hidden microphones. Linda and I did our best to look inconspicuous, but we were fairly stressed out about getting booted fromt he seats, so it was dificult to relax and watch the match or take pictures...just kept looking at the security guys... eventually, it turned out that they were giving the boot to some people inn front of us who had obviously received a complaint of some sort. they didn’t seem to be causing any sort of disruption, but something must have happened before we got there.

anyways, the tennis was fantastic, and I certainly left, feeling that, even though the trip was not even 1/3 over, that I had gotten my money’s worth, and had made the right decision in making sure that I saw the aussie open, depite the warnings of it being a bad time to go to Australia (due the the heat in some areas, and the rain in others).