Training in Rouen, Normandy

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This is Marc Varta reporting from Rouen, a medium sized city that's about an hour and a half train ride northwest from Paris. I arrived Tuesday morning, & realized Colin and I never set a meeting time or place! That error led to a long and confusing day of us trying to find each other without phones or email in Paris and in Rouen, where Colin had booked us a room for the night. Eventually, Colin found me wh

ile window shopping on Rouen's main street in downt

own, Rue de Republica. We were very happy and relieved to have found each other and checked into our room. Here is the view looking out the window in our small room. We grabbed our rackets and set out in search of a tennis court we found on a map. After much searching we gave up on the court and hit against a wall in the downtown area and played some games of reflex volleys, wanting to keep sharp for our competition to come.

Wednesday we spent the whole morning viewing the sights Rouen's historical district has to offer, including the famous Notre

Dame of Rouen. Here is Colin striking a pose in front of the massive cathedral. We also went inside and learned of the famous french painter, Claude Monet's famous impressionist paintings of the Cathedral.

We then decided it was time to hit the courts. We

stumbled through various bus swaps and much walking, finally arriving at a few public hard courts a good distance

out of the city. We practiced and got picked up by our new friend Mr. Gustavo. We a

rrived at the apartment where we are spending a few nights and were thrilled to find a sweet (pimped out tennis/hockey training facility) apartment flat equipped with a kitchen, living room, couches, and a state of the art gym!

We have been really hammering out our tournament plans and, with the help of Mr. Gustavo, got into three tournaments starting tuesday on the Normandy Coast! It's cool how the tournaments are organized; we are playing one tourny and then the next one (a week or so later) is about 15 km up the coast. The 3rd one is another 10km up the coast. After these three tournys we plan to play 3 more in Britagney, further west and on the coast.