Tuesday night I walked over to the tennis club to scout my potential opponents (who were playing not before 9pm!) and to watch a bit of one of the American guys I know, Kline Sack, who is playing in the 50s, as is Brendan Murphy (seeded #2 here). Murphy came by to watch for a while…he’s an artist and a very good tennis player too. There are very few Americans in the tennis draw (apparently they are all at the Boqueria market). Lots of people were watching Spain vs France in the European soccer championships…there were two huge roars coming from the apartments behind the club in the evening (Spain scored 2 goals to win 2/1).
Kline split sets in his 6pm match at around 9pm, so I left to try and scout (he did eventually beat the #12 seeded Spaniard, setting up a match with the #3 seed from Turkey, Okan Okyay) tonight.
I finally left the site though at 9:30, my potential opponents had not yet made onto court. The matches here start at 6pm, there are four rounds scheduled 90 minutes apart with the last round scheduled for 10:30pm!
Today I practiced with Rosemary and Peter & Philip Seeman from NZL. Peter and Philip are still in the 60 singles as is Patrick Mangan from the USA. All were seeded. It was pretty muggy today even at 10am.
After practicing I decided to to the Boqueria Market, partly to take some photos…I was there about 18 months ago but then my phone was stolen before they were uploaded to the cloud. The market was super crowded at around 2pm, mostly with tourists (probably entirely with tourists), gawking as I was, and eating and drinking. There were lots of empanadas, fruit juices, fried potatoes, fish, chicken, chips…you name it, and lots of vendors of dried beef and sausages, and a few fresh fruit and vegetable sellers. There was an egg seller which sold Emu & Ostrich eggs in addition to regular and quail eggs! I bought a big tomato, took my photos and left.
I walked towards the gothic quarter, along some of its narrow streets, then back to Las Ramblas, the long boulevard leading to the sea from the Placa Catalunya, back to the subway, which was pretty crowded. There were quite a variety of stores in addition to normal tourist type stores selling keychains, t-shirts etc.
I stopped at El Cortes Ingles for some socks and snacks, then took a taxi back to my hotel…and left my camera in the taxi! Maybe taking photos in the Boqueria is a curse. I realized it pretty quickly, put my phone on lost mode with a message and the taxi driver called me and brought it back within 10 minutes to the hotel. Whew!
Tomorrow, Thursday, I finally play tennis matches in the evening. I play a pretty good Columbian player first round. The 60 & 65 divisions were combined for doubles, so we are playing in the 60s, and there are some really good teams in the draw this year, including the team we probably play first round, the same Columbian and a good Spanish player.