Roland Garros 2008 - Day 10

Woke up this morning with a scratchy throat and the sniffles.  I am guessing I have managed to catch cold, though I do not quite know how.  It was raining out and I decided to sleep an extra hour instead of running because despite appearances, I am not a die hard runner and I was not about to wander out into the garden in the pouring rain.

I woke up an hour later and it was still raining.  So, that means I will verify the gym facilities in the hotel instead.  The building is generically very odd to start.  It is really two buildings; the Saint James and the Albany.  That means significant parts of the hotel are disjointed.  The Spa is one such area.  It is in the Saint James basement, which is not accessible from the elevators in the Albany portion of the building.  Since I am staying in the Saint James half, I took my elevator down and walked to the desk.  They asked for my room number and then made me give them my key as well.  She put a post-it note on the card, but it made me a bit nervous.

The gym is relatively well equipped.  There is a treadmill (presently broken), one elliptical, and two stationary bikes.  Since the elliptical was in use, I moved to one of the bikes.  Besides, that will mean a lot less impact on my knees and should give my hip a chance to calm itself. :-)  I managed almost 20 km in the 55 minutes, which isn't a bad pace.  The room, however, is like many for me in Paris, little to no circulating air.  I was drenched in sweat so I could not in good conscience go straight to breakfast and it was in the Albany basement anyway so I couldn't get there directly.  So, a quick run to the room and change and then down for another buffet.  They still don't quite recognize me there, but I am getting better at my one phrase of French to get entrance. :-)

Today was going to be my day to go to a cemetery to see the headstones of famous dead people.  When a city is as old as Paris, it is possible to have thousands of famous names on headstones, and Paris has four distinct ancient cemeteries which are no longer actively used (unless you have a family plot or tomb that can still hold additional family members.)  I chose Cemetery of Père Lachaise as it had a few names I personally was impressed by.  It was a fairly long haul to get to the Eastern side of the city (almost 18 total metro stops) but I made it and there was no appreciable rain falling as I walked out.

The magnitude of the place cannot be described in blogs.  The Web site link above gives an inkling.  The place is huge, divided into sections, and densely packed with headstones and tombs.  They provide maps at the visitors center, but even then that doesn't really give more than a vague idea of where to look.  Paths meander and change without warning.  Still, I managed to find the headstone (which has been moved now three times due to vandalism and theft) of Jim Morrison, Frederic Chopin, Sarah Bernhardt, and Oscar Wilde.  I would call myself cultured, considering this list spans 4 centuries of a variety of cultural icons, but I am just a vat of marginally useful knowledge and they are names lost in the vat.

The cemetery for some reason gave very odd signal.  Standing still I could get five bars and zero bars all at the same time.  I tried to call Colleen from there, but kept losing her.  She had a doctor's appointment and had to leave the house very early so we had to cut our conversation short anyway.  I walked out a different entrance and tried to call her back but she was between phones at that point.  I saw an Indian place, but I was almost at the extreme end of Paris from work so I decided it would make more sense to bail on lunch and get onto the metro to head in.

Dinner at the end of the day was decided to be A Tavola.  I love that place, and even Colleen has eaten there, though at the time she was still having lactose issues and I am almost sure she had gotten ill after.  It was once again awesome, though I managed to drip olive oil onto my venue T-shirt.  I even broke down and had Tiramisu for dessert, though I had wanted to try something different.  At the end of the meal, the owner, who knows IBM by name and the number of times we frequent his place, came over to offer us a sampling of a variety of Grappa.  They were very good, though the last one he offered was by far the best, and of course most expensive.

Literally caught the last train out of Boulogne.  Eating dinner at midnight is still a shock to me but if they're willing to serve us, I am willing to eat.  I was a bit buzzed from the beer and Grappa and knew I had to get up the next day for an early return.  At least Tuesday is a rest day so I don't have to get up too early.  My only real chore is to once again get laundry sent out.  I didn't call Colleen, though I really wanted to.  I was just dead on my feet and the cold had taken a bit out of me.  I drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

Cheers!