After a mostly sleepless night (jet lag…I didn’t miss you), I hit on the red clay for the first time in nearly two years. I went to a small club, Global Tennis Team, where there are mostly kids and teenagers training and training hard. I hit with Rafael for 90 minutes…(no sitting down) and then watched the kids train for a while. There were a lot of 3 person drills…two on one from the baseline (one ball…a ball goes in the net, the player has to run and retrieve it), another drill where two players hit cross court while the third runs from one end to the other…when he/she arrives, the other player runs to the opposite end and starts hitting cross court…constant movement.

The weather has been great, highs in the upper 80s to low 90s with a breeze.

After hitting on Friday I decided to find a phone store to buy a SIM card for Spain and Germany. After a quick internet search, I drove to the phone store which was in a small mall that contained both Vodafone and Orange cell stores, and a huge store called Al Campo, some eating places and a Decathalon sports store (sort of like a discount Dick’s sporting goods store).

I only went into the grocery portion of the store…it was bigger than a Costco (the whole store was)..I got a walking workout just looking around. The Spanish certainly like their meat and fish…both areas were huge, lots of leg of beef and tons of sausages, shell fish, live lobsters, squid, whole fish, acres of cheeses, one row devoted to chocolates…and good prices. Food in general seems inexpensive here but then I’ve only been to Aldi, Lidl and Al Campo.

I did get my SIM card, at Vodafone, (20 euros for 70 GB of data which is pretty good, good for 28 days which was perfect). The phone works and took me to training the next day using the navigation program.