Taking On The French Open: 48 Hours in Paris

So, in addition to my love of all things boozy, and tasty, and roving the world looking for adventure, I also LOVE sport. Whether it’s football, rugby, netball, athletics, whatever, I’ll watch it regardless, but nothing quite marks my year like the tennis grand slams.

Wimbledon is always around my birthday, the US denotes the end of summer and the start of cosy autumnal evenings, and the Aussie Open marks the start of another year. But Roland Garros, with its slidey surfaces and sophisticated Parisian flare, signals that bright, summery days are well and truly upon us.

My friend Charlotte and I had both been to Wimbledon and with cheap flights and AirBnBs, Paris was next on the list, so with ground passes for men’s final day secured, we headed for the very hot French capital, with only 48 hours to see as much as we could, on a budget.

Getting into the city late on Friday evening, it was straight to the little studio apartment to crash and prepare for the busy day of sightseeing ahead. Now, if you’ve read any of the other posts on this site, you’ll know that I’m not shy of exploring a city on foot. However, the amount of walking that Charlotte and I did that day, in the thirty-degree heat, was truly astonishing. We did a whistlestop tour that included the Rhine, the Sacre Coeur, the Arc De Triomphe, and the Eiffel – all the big hitters.

But after all that, food and drink were well and truly needed. Enter the French staples of cheese, bread, and wine. Three of my favourite things in the world, and three things that I practically lived on for that weekend. However, as I’m a Pescetarian and Charlotte is Coeliac, trying to find places where we could both eat on a budget wasn’t always easy on a time crunch.

However, Brassiere Barbès, a beautiful restaurant close to our AirBnB was by far one of the best meals I’ve ever tasted. So much so, that I even tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to recreate it for my Christmas dinner. I still dream about this tuna dish with puy lentils and all the accouterments. It was that good. And it goes without saying that you couldn’t get a bad glass of wine in Paris if you tried, and it’s cheaper than water. Definitely my kind of town.

So, fully sated and rested, we headed out for Roland Garros – the home of French tennis and Rafa Nadal’s personal kingdom. Having seen online how expensive the food is there we were armed with a substantial picnic, a strategic game plan to see McEnroe play an exhibition game and an alarm set for when we had to leave to make it to the airport in time.

Fortunately for us, we saw everything we wanted to see and Nadal dispatched Thiem with such speed that we were out of the gates before the alarm went off. Unfortunately for us, when we got to the airport, our flight was delayed and then cancelled. So 5 panicked hours of trying to find alternate ways home in time for work the next day (along with 200 other people), a call to my dad back home to see if he could pick us up from a completely different UK airport the next morning, we were en route to our complimentary hotel for the night.

It was in Disney an hour away from the airport. I don’t know if you’ve ever approached a rancher-inspired Disney hotel at 2am, but it eerily looks a lot like a scene out of The Shining. But both of us were too tired to register how truly odd this experience was.

So, Paris was definitely a trip of two halves, 10/10 for wine, cheese, and tennis-based events, but a stone-cold zero for budget airlines on deadlines.