It’s been a busy and very fun week. I went up to the Monterey/Pebble Beach California on the Central Coast for my niece’s fairytale wedding in Pebble Beach, where we had three perfect sunny days, a rarity in July on the northern and central coast…normally it’s foggy and cold…instead it was mild and sunny and oh so gorgeous. I did have time to visit a few of my favorite spots on 17 Mile Drive one morning.

After the wedding, I had a couple of hours sleep, then drove to San Francisco and flew to Barcelona for a tournament. The tournament is being held at the Royal Polo Club in Barcelona, a huge club with (you guessed it) polo fields and red clay courts…and padel courts (that was not a misspelling), and lots of soccer fields plus some nice pools and restaurants. The tournament is weird in that there is no play before 6pm and matches have starting times of 6, 7:30, 9 and 10:30. Tonight, Tuesday, I have a 10:30 doubles match! I’ve not played that late since it rained a lot at the 35 grass and we had to start a doubles match around midnight.

I’m playing doubles with Erin Boynton from Canada. Yesterday Erin and I went to the grocery store for supplies, then  practiced. We were assigned court 28, but never actually found it, but luckily for us, there was another court open and we were able to hop on it for a couple of hours. Later Erin, her daughter Hannah and Iwent to a tapas restaurant and also had paella.  We walked by the Gaudi House, Casa Batillo, a really cool examle of his architecture.

The courts here are pretty slow but the Babolat Roland Garros balls combined with the high bouncing red clay make the courts a little faster and definitely bouncier than the clay in Germany for example. The courts are pretty good though.

There are lots of clay courts, padel courts and soccer fields near my hotel. The Polo club is on one side and, below, the David Lloyed club is on the other side.