French Open Trip 2018 Day 6: A Family Affair
At 1 AM a couple of months back Jenn and I had planned to buy tickets to Roland Garros for one day. But then once we had purchased for Monday, Jenn spent ten seconds to convince me to buy a second day. And after today, I'm so glad she did. We woke up at around 9 AM and got ready a little before 11 AM to head back out to Roland Garros.
Unfortunately, the weather this morning didn't look promising. It was lightly raining from the time we got up to the point when our Uber driver dropped us off at Roland Garros. As we entered in the tournament grounds tennis was still being played on all of the courts which for me was sort of shocking, it was raining pretty well. We hurriedly made our way to Court Philippe Chatrier and caught about five games of the Cilic match before the rain really started coming down and the match was suspended. Jenn and I sat in our seats as one of the crazy people you see on ESPN hoping for a miracle.
Luckily for us, a miracle did happen and by 1 PM the rain had stopped and the tarp had been taken off the court. We got to watch Cilic win his match, Nadal finish his match from the day before, and Serena win her match before heading out. During that time the rain came and went, never enough to stop the match. Jenn was amazing and got us Roland Garros ponchos which kept us warm and dry. I once again enjoyed a hot dog and Perrier for lunch while Jenn had a hamburger and water. The entire day at Rolland Garros was perfect. From the great tennis to the amazing seats (even better then yesterdays) and just a great time sitting with Jenn and watching grand slam tennis.
We left the ground of Roland Garros promising to come back and made our way to the subway to make it back to our hotel. Although we didn't get to watch all of the tennis today we had other plans this evening. A little after 7 PM all of my siblings who had just arrived in Paris on the "chunnel" (channel tunnel) met us at our hotel to enjoy their first dinner in Paris. After a loud and excited embrace inside the Hyatt Paris Madeline, we made the twenty-minute walk past the Louvre to our dinner reservations at Mumi.
The restaurant in total may have sat 30-people and we got a great table for the six of us to enjoy our dinner. Similar to last nights dinner at Saturne the options for dinner were incredibly limited. Here you had the option for a four or six-course meal, with or without a wine pairing. Jenn, Jake and I went with the six-courses with wine while Ryan, Amy, and Ally went with the four-course meal with wine.
The meal began with two brief amuse bouche's which were two small crackers with a red pepper spread and a mushroom soup. Everyone's first course was the raw trout with rhubarb and horseradish. Similar to last night, the fish was phenomenal and the sauce was equally as exquisite.
Next up for everyone was a white asparagus with a vanilla sauce and lemon balm. Asparagus must be in season in Paris because there's something quite exquisite about how delicious their asparagus is. Not only that but the sauce was so good that I wasn't the only one at the table using bread to soak up as much of the sauce as possible.
Our next course was the same for everyone (except Ryan who had pork belly) was the lean fish with green peas, broad beans and curry. Of all the dishes this is the one I was worried was going to be a letdown but once again the light fish and the beautiful sauce made this a dish that had literally everyone at the table raving over it. It's amazing what a simple fish with a great sauce can turn into.
For Jenn, Jake and I we had our fifth course next which was an imperial pigeon with beetroot and cherry. The idea of eating pigeon freaked some people out at our table but for the three of us we enjoyed the beautifully cooked bird in a great sauce and amazing red wine pairing. This wasn't our first time having pigeon but it was far and away the best.
The final two courses were dessert. The first of the two was a peach, almond and edelflower dish. I'm not usually the biggest fan of peaches but I loved this one. And last but not least was sadly all of our least favorite dish of the night a strawberry sorrel and meringue. It was fine but we could have used some chocolate to close out the night. A couple of us did finish off dinner with an espresso. After a little over three hours, we paid the bill and left Mumi as one of the last patrons to leave their amazing restaurant.
From Mumi we walked to the nearby Seine river where we watched the twinkling lights of the Eiffel tower and enjoyed a beautiful Paris evening. We all were still coming off the high of an incredible meal and jumped into an Uber van to take us to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up one more time at 1 AM. We arrived at the Eiffel Tower, took hundreds of photos, and at 1 AM we watched for the next five or so minutes the Eiffel Tower light up my favorite city in the world.
I think we all knew at different points throughout the evening that tonight was one of the moments/memories that will last us a long time. It's something that in our 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's we will probably bring up on occasion. There was a sense of wonder that all of us could be in this place, at the same time, together, enjoying something that felt like it was from a movie. When the Eiffel stopped blinking the rain almost immediately started coming down and we dispersed into to Ubers and back to our hotels. I'll never forget today for as long as I live.
