Australian Open

I didn't find time to blog about our Australian Open experience yesterday as I was busy searching on the net for gift ideas for D's birthday which is next week!
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I really enjoyed the tennis. The day definitely needed more sunshine but at least the rain held off until late in the day.


This is how our day went:

D wakes me up early on Sunday (barely even 8!) just because he was too excited to sleep in. The games were scheduled to begin at 11am so you can imagine my reaction when he woke me too early. Not a pretty sight.

I crawled out of bed at around 9 o'clock, puttered around the house for a bit, got D to make some coffee, packed necessary things (tickets, metcards, venue map, match schedule, cap, extra jumper, umbrella, water bottle, etc) and was out the door by 10. We went to the grocery and bakery to pick up some baon.

We drove to the train station, parked the car (more on this later) and waited 16 minutes for the next train to Richmond.

We got to the Vodafone Arena at quarter to 11 and were able to score decent seats. It was around this time that D realized he had accidentally left his keys inside the car. Hehe, that is so like me. As we couldn't do anything about it then, we decided to sit and enjoy the tennis (well, I did anyway. I'm sure D was stressing about it the whole day).

We decided to watch the first 3 matches in Vodafone Arena before making our way to the outside courts.

They were:

Haas vs Mayer
Peer vs Kuznetsova
Vaidisova vs Dementieva

As I am not a sports commentator and am too lazy, you'll have to read the links for the match summaries.

My dad asked me if it was different watching it live rather than on TV. It definitely is. The atmosphere, the watching-things-unfold-as-they-happen and no commercials make the experience worthwhile. On the downside, you don't get replays or commentaries (then again, that's not such a bad thing anyway). I wish I had scheduled more days to watch this year. Oh well. I'll definitely be back next year. I'm hoping my dad gets to join me then...

We were headed for Show Court 3 to watch a doubles game when it started to drizzle steadily.

Vera Dushevina (RUS)/Maria Kirilenko (RUS)
vs
Martina Hingis (SUI)/Svetlana Kuznetsova (RUS)

We got to the court but all play was delayed and everything was very wet. We decided to call it a day and go home.
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p.s.
D (using packing tape he scrounged in the arena) was able to break into his car in less than a minute. I was duly impressed.

p.p.s
I'll post some pictures later as I don't have the memory sticks with me here.