PARIS
- GUEST REPORT FROM TAMSIN!
As I’m sitting in the window writing this I keep getting
distracted by the view… Paris has been amazing as
always! So gorgeous, so beautiful. The main draw hotel turned
out to be a beautiful apartment which gave us a 180 degree
view of Paris, the Eiffel Tower as the center piece right
outside our window about 800 meters away. To the left is
the Seine and to the right I can see Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur
and all of Paris’ niggled streets and apartments.
Ahhhh Paris….
View aside, we’ve had another successful tour stop!
Finished 5th at the Paris Grand Slam which is a huge result.
It was the first pool play event of the season which meant
a new tournament format but we handled it well finishing
2nd in our pool.
That took us through to single-elimination rounds and a
German feast! We beat their 2 top teams back to back to
shift from a possible 17th to a 5th. They were both close
and very emotionally intense. Paris threw its moody weather
at us (rain, wind, lightning… cold!) but we came through
it strongly, beating them both convincingly.
We lost our last match to go through to the semis to Misty
May and Kerri Walsh, the current World Champions and Athens
Olympic Gold medalists. It was my first time playing them
and of course our first time as a team against them. We
fought it out but they played a really strong game. All
I can say is that it is great to play against them so early
on and I hope to play them many more times this year. I
learnt a lot just in this match and it showed us the level
we need to be at to beat them.
Our last night in Paris gave us a break in the weather so
we took the chance to see Paris from ground level. We metro-ed
to Notre Dame and wandered through the alleyways packed
with cafes and tourists. It felt so alive. It’s not
dark here until 10.30pm so everywhere is packed until late.
We successfully avoided eating snails and frogs then after
a lap of Notre Dame found a great little crepe shop (yum!).
We’d been on a “pastry ban” the whole
week with patisserie after patisserie trying to lure us
in with their beautiful food. Our crepe was well earned!!!
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