The travels of Tim and Megan: June 2009

On Sunday we visited Kew Gardens in south-west London. This year marks the 250th anniversary of Kew Gardens, so it was a great time to visit!

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, as they are formally known, are a World Heritage site and the most complete public gardens in the world. Kew Gardens house the world's largest collection of living plants, with more than 30,000 different types of plants, as well as over 7 million preserved plant specimens in the herbarium. The organisation employs more than 650 scientists and other staff.

Kew Gardens originated in the exotic garden at Kew Park formed by Lord Capel of Tewkesbury. It was enlarged and extended by Augusta Dowager, Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, for whom Sir William Chambers built several garden structures, including a huge Chinese pagoda (built in 1761), which still stands today. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks (who should be familiar to Kiwis, as one of Captain Cook's crew members, who Banks Peninsula was named after).

The collections grew rather haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden. The garden's present size is 120 hectares (300 acres)!

It was a lovely day to wander the gardens on Sunday - a little grey at first, but sunny and quite hot later in the afternoon. We started our visit by heading to the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which houses 10 climate zones. We saw a section on carnivorous plants as well as an extensive collection of cacti, ferns and orchids, which were all very interesting.

Next to the Princess of Wales Conservatory, there is a large outdoor rock garden, separated into areas for each of the different continents - there were even a few plants from little old New Zealand in the rock garden. We sat on the grass in front of the rose garden and ate our lunch before visiting the Waterlilly House and the enormous Palm House. Palm House houses tropical rain forests. It was very hot inside this huge glasshouse, particularly when we walked upstairs to the top level. Some of the plants in there were absolutely massive - one had leaves that must have been about 4-5 metres long!

After escaping outside for some cooler air, we walked across to the Xstrata Treetop Walkway, an 18 metre high circular walkway connecting several big trees. There are great views of Kew Gardens from up on the walkway, as well as views of London - you can even see the Wembley arch! Back on the ground, we walked back across the gardens through the Azalea Garden and the Magnolias towards Kew Palace.

Kew Palace is the smallest of the British royal palaces. It was built by Samuel Fortrey, a Dutch merchant in around 1631. It was later purchased by George III. To the rear of the building is the "Queen's Garden" which includes a collection of plants believed to have medicinal qualities. We enjoyed wandering through the Queen's Garden, admiring the fountains and sculptures - a nice way to round off our visit to Kew Gardens.

Megs in the
Princess of
Wales Con-
servatory

Tim and
Palm
House

Megs in
the Rock
Garden

Waterlilly
House

Palm
House

Inside
Palm
House

View from
Treetop
Walkway

And
again

Kew
Palace

Saturday

We love going to Paris. Not only for the obvious reasons that it is a beautiful city and there is so much to see and do there, but also because we can get there on the Eurostar train without any airports, aeroplanes or hour-long journeys to get to and from the airport at either end. So despite our early start on Saturday morning, things were not as bad as they could have been! The cab picked us up at 5.15am to drop us at St Pancras station for our 6.20am train.

Paris turned on stunning weather for the whole weekend so we were greeted at Gare du Nord with sun, blue sky and temperatures already in to the 20s. We were staying at Comfort Hotel Lamarck-Caulaincourt in the Montmatre area, so we headed there to drop off our bags and then we set off for a day of exploring the city. We were travelling with Neena and Kristen. Neena had never been to Paris before, so she was tres excited about pretty much everything.

After grabbing some breakfast at a boulangerie beside our hotel, we walked up the hill towards the Sacre Coeur basilica. Kristen had visited the basilica before but it was one of the major Paris landmarks that the two of us had not seen yet.

The Sacre Coeur is a Roman Catholic basilica, situated at the top of the Montmatre hill, the highest point in the city. It was constructed between 1875 and 1914. The Sacre Coeur is built of travertine stone quarried in Chateau-Landon (Seine-et-Marne), France. This stone constantly exudes calcite, which ensures that the basilica remains pearly white even with weathering and pollution.

We wandered around the inside of the magnificent basilica (while there was a mass going on!) and then climbed the 200-odd steps to the top of the dome for spectacular panoramic views over Paris. Unfortunately the crypt beneath the basilica was closed, so we could not have a look down there. After our tour was complete, we walked down the many steps in front of the basilica and sat on the grass hill in the sun. There are great views of the basilica from there (see photos below), which were even better with the stunning blue sky as a backdrop.

After checking out a bit of the very lively area around the Sacre Coeur, we made out way into the city and visited the Palais-Royal Gardens. The Palais-Royal is a palace and associated garden situated in central Paris, just across from the north wing of the Louvre. We had a walk through the gardens, which were very pretty and surprisingly peaceful, given they are right in the middle of the city.

We had lunch in a cafe near the Louvre and then walked down to the Louvre courtyard and sat by the fountains beside the glass pyramid. It was so hot we felt like jumping into the fountain. From the Louvre, we crossed the river and then made our way to L'Ile de la Cite, where we got some amazing ice cream and ate it sitting in front of the Notre Dame cathedral. Although it was late in the afternoon by this stage, it was still really hot. We thought about going to the Luxembourg gardens, but the girls got a little side-tracked and ended up going clothes shopping instead!

It had been an early start and a fairly busy day, so we retired to the hotel and freshened up before going out for drinks and dinner. The Monmatre area has lots of great bars and restaurants. We enjoyed some French wine at a couple of bars before having dinner at a restaurant called Brasserie Nord-Sud. We had snails to share as a starter - they were quite tasty but rather slimey! The food was superb, especially the desserts - among the four of us we had a creme brulee, a chocolate mousse, crepes with nutella and profiteroles - delicious.

We were all exhausted after a long, hot day of sight-seeing, so we dragged ourselves back the hotel and slept like babies!

Sunday

The real reason for our weekend in Paris was to go to the French Open tennis at Roland Garros. The French Open is the only one of the four grand slam tennis tournaments to be played on a clay surface, which makes it quite different to the others. Many greats of the game, including arguably the two greatest men's players of all time, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, have not won the French Open (although Roger is just days away from putting that right).

On the flip side, there are many clay court specialists who excel at Roland Garros. Already one of the greatest ever clay court players at just 22 years of age, the current world number one, Rafael Nadal, was the four-time defending champion in Paris, having never lost a match at the tournament. He was once again the raging hot favourite to win the title.

We were extremely excited about going to the tennis, as we had tickets for the main court, Court Philippe Chatrier, where we would see four 4th round singles matches. The line-up was Fernando Gonzalez v Victor Hanescu; womens' world number one Dinara Safina v Frenchwoman Aravane Rezai; Rafael Nadal v Robin Soderling; and finally Maria Sharapova v Na Li. The obvious highlight was that we were going to see Rafael Nadal playing on his favourite surface at his favourite tournament, where he had never ever lost a match.

We woke early to a glorious hot, sunny Paris day. We checked out of the hotel, dropped our bags off at the Gare du Nord station and headed to the Rue Cler markets for breakfast! The variety and quality of food at the markets is amazing. We bought some pastries, crepes with banana and nutella and fresh fruit for a picnic breakfast in front of the Eiffel Tower. Neena commented at the time that she could not think of a finer place on the planet for a picnic and she was probably right. While at the markets, we also bought some cheese and bread and a few other snacks for lunch at the tennis.

We arrived at Roland Garros around 11.30am and headed straight for the centre court, where Fernando Gonzalez had already begun his demolition of Victor Hanescu. The timing and power of his shots, particularly his forehand, was remarkable. Gonzalez won the match 6-2, 6-4, 6-2. Spank. Next on centre court was womens' world number one Dinara Safina, who was equally dominant in beating Aravane Rezai 6-1, 6-0. Ouch.

Then it was time for the main event - Rafael Nadal v Robin Soderling. You have probably all heard (or guessed from my build-up) what happened. The unthinkable, the impossible, the upset of grand slam history - Nadal lost. Nadal had been absolutely unbeatable on the clay of Roland Garros for the previous four years. He not only defeated Roger Federer en route to each of those four titles, but he annihilated Federer in some cases. So Nadal losing at all at the French Open would have been a shock. But to lose in the 4th round against Robin Soderling was simply impossible.

Nadal showed glimpses of his magic here and there and he fought hard right til the end, but he was not at his best, making too many unforced errors. To be fair, Robin Soderling played an outstanding match - he was simply breath-taking. The match in general was stunning, as both players played some ridiculous shots and there were some long rallies. The crowd went crazy as they sensed an upset and they were actually cheering for Soderling - perhaps they just want a new name on the trophy!

Soderling won the match 6-2, 6-7(2-7), 6-4, 7-6(7-2). It was not until Soderling went 6-1 up in the fourth set tie breaker that we actually thought Nadal was gone, such is his amazing ability to fight back from the death. The majority of the crowd were ecstatic. Megan was devastated. She is a huge Nadal fan and she was so excited to see him live and in his favourite tournament. Obviously she had not expected this sort of result. Neena, Kristen and Tim were stunned, slightly disappointed not to see Nadal at his best and slightly pleased that the upset may have opened the way for Roger Federer to finally win the one grand slam to have eluded him so far.

The final match of the day was Maria Sharapova v Na Li. It was a strange old match but Sharapova eventually won it 6-4, 0-6, 6-4. We left that match early to head back across Paris to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to London. It had been an action-packed two days in the French capital and we were all knackered by the end of it.

We have now been to three of the four grand slam tennis tournaments, with just the Australian Open left to conquer. And fingers crossed Roger Federer can win the French Open this Sunday to complete a career grand slam of his own!

In front
of Sacre
Coeur