In spite of the obvious stress that this is placing on me, I am yet again beside the water in Marseille drinking cold liquid after another searching day. My plans fell into place for once and I did catch the train to Arles - about an hour away - and it satisfied somewhat the Italian void in my trip. Yes those ruins of the Roman kind can take you back centuries and remove all sense that in fact you may be straddling the Rhone in France.
The river was in fine form, as were the buildings, looking just as old as they ever did, in fact more so. Hopefully the significant restoration underway will ultimately demand an even greater level of care available from the increased tourist dollar.
Van Gogh was said to have spent some time in Arles, but that fact bears little consequence when stacked up against the news that the Gipsy Kings are natives of this town. Who'd have thought it? And to add to the flavour, my IPod shuffle randomly selected one of their hits as I was leaving the train station to head home to Marseille. Oops, I said home a bit too easily didn't I?
While I am doing little of value here, some of the world's tennis players are doing even less. Only kidding, they do try hard. All the Australians are now beaten in current singles tournaments - Lleyton Hewitt the last to go a short time ago at Halle. It was the right thing for Hewitt to lose to the local player Kohlschreiber - doesn't help his ranking but won't lose him friends.
Meanwhile my latest find is a brasserie with 4 large screens all tuned to Eurosport and showing quarter finals from Queens, London. Nadal and Tsonga were trading service games until the Spaniard took the tie break. A turn of events saw both drop their opening serves in the second set before steady as you go and 4-4 was achieved.
Funny watching the game played on grass - better become used to it I suppose. Nadal then cracked, the Frenchman broke and held to take the set 6-4 and from there never looked back. That would be silly anyway playing tennis - you would lose most points with that attitude.
Of course all the while I was eating my honeyed duck breast extremely slowly in order to catch the final result which was 6-7 6-4 6-1 on all 4 screens for Tsonga who I will be seeing at full confidence at Eastbourne next week maybe as winner of Queens.
Have to go now - time to spend a few precious more euros on hydrating myself.
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