Bean & Joe's Travel Blog: Roland Garros was a famous . . .

aviator. The first man to fly across the Mediterranean Sea, from Europe to Africa. He was shot down near the end of World War I and died at 29. I had no idea about any of this. Roland Garros Stade was built after the Four French Musketeers (Jacques "Toto" Brugnon, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste (nicknamed "the crocodile" and the founder of Izod) are part of the monument pictured below, Lacoste is shown here next to Sammie our guide)

defeated the United States in the 1927 Davis Cup and needed a place to host their defense in 1928. The French Rugby club Stade Francais ceded the land for the stadium, asking that it be named after one of its famous members, (Roland).

While I really wanted to go here all week, I was wishy-washy about actually going because I knew it be a bit of a hike and take up a good part of our day. I must credit Gina with pushing our plan ahead. When we woke up today, instead of our usual leisurely morning with coffee and croissant, we got ready and got moving.

Roland Garros is not super easy to get to. While it is inside the Paris border, we had to take two different metro lines to get there. One stop on the 8 line, getting on at Ecole Militaire, then a transfer to the 10 line. You should get off at Porte d'Auteuil, but we stayed on the metro too long and got off at Boulogne - Pont de Saint - Cloud. The upshot of this is that we walked through a pretty and upscale suburb, Boulogne-Billancourt, which is right outside the border of Paris.

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We got very lucky when we got there, as a tour was starting in five minutes (11 am). You should reserve this, as I don't think you can always just walk up for the tour. I don't think there was another one until later in the afternoon. The next tour was in French, and this is not a place that they let you wander unguided. We immediately met a very nice Mother and Daughter (shown in picture below) who were from Evansville, Indiana. They were happy to meet a fellow Hoosier. I mentioned that one of our only readers lived in Jasper as a child and they were familiar with it. We had spotted them earlier on the metro, and had witnessed them getting off at the correct metro stop (but we didn't know where they were going).

Our guide Sammie was very good, he had a nice sense of humour, and as Gina says, he had a nice way about him.

There is a practice space used by the tennis students who live and learn at the facility. While pros can reserve the courts, they are generally not used by any known players, other than right before the French Open. We were very lucky to see Richard Gasquet practice with another pro that I am not familiar with. Sammie mentioned his name, but it didn't stick with me. My tennis knowledge is not what it once was, but I do know Gasquet's name, if not his game.

We went into the main stadium and visited the press area, interview and locker room.

The men's and women's locker rooms are exactly the same with one exception. There is no Locker #19 in the women's locker room; it was retired and given as a gift to Steffi Graf, who always used locker 19, when she played at the French Open, which she won six times.

This is the room where the winners are interviewed. Next question s'il vous plait . . .

View from the Press Box

We got to walk in the little "secret" passage that takes the players from the locker room to the court. In that hallway they have asked every player who plays in the open to sign the wall in the stairwell. Hard to get a good picture.

We then were able to walk around center court. It is a smallish stadium, 15,000 for such a big event. The clay is not really clay, it is limestone covered with a little bit of brick dust. All Gina could think of was dirty the clothes and sneakers must get . . . We passed a laundry room near the lockers, it was locked so Gina could not sneak a peak.

After the tour, we needed to use the restroom. I almost mistook these sinks for urinals, glad I figured it out.

We did not pay to go to the museum, but that is where the restroom was, so we got to see some of it. I wouldn't pay extra to see it, it was really nothing special, though we did learn a bit about Roland the aviator.