Australian Open

Melbourne Marriot Hotel-  After nearly 30 hours of travel we were thinking our first day in Melbourne would be pretty relaxed…that thought changed when we were waiting for our last flight from Sydney to Melbourne and had access to internet.  We were able to look up the days schedule for the Australian Open and found out Andy Roddick and Venus Williams were scheduled to play in the early session on the main court.  Before leaving we decided these were the two players we really wanted to see and here they were playing in the same session so we would be getting a two for one deal.  The only problem was they were the 2^nd and 3^rd matches on the court and the 1^st match started at 11:30 am.  Our flight was not scheduled to land until 11:25 so we knew after taking a shuttle to our hotel and checking in we would be cutting it close.  There was also the small problem of not actually having tickets!

With all the excitement for the day we decided it was time to use our gift from our goddaughter Nina…our first beers on the plane (see picture)!  The flight attendants apparently do not work WI flights very often as they had to go look if they had beer…or maybe it was cause it was 9:30 am.  Either way they ended up being free so we figured Nina would be ok with buying us a beer at the Australian Open when we got there.

The shuttle dropped us off at the hotel at 12:15 and after quickly enjoying a free glass of honeymoon champagne (we get very excited to tell people we are on our honeymoon and even more excited if that leads to something free!), we headed to the room to check the match status.  Roddick had just started so we knew if we hustled we would definitely make it as the hotel said it would be a 20 minute walk and also said we could buy tickets just a block up so we wouldn’t have to go all the way there just to find out it was sold out. 

The ticket office came through big!  We’re not sure how this happened but they were able to release two tickets for us which turned out to be about 15 rows up from the court!  (sidenote: there were other seats available at the top and all pricing for tickets is the same so these were not the last 2 left just far better than what should have been available)

After doing another home alone to get to Rod Laver Arena quicker we found our way to the seats with the match tied at 5 games each between Roddick and Kunitsyn.  If you have never been to a professional tennis match before let me tell you walking in for the first time is quite the experience.  Walking into Lambeau, Camp Randall, the Kohl Center, etc. you can feel a buzz and excitement from the crowd not to mention the very loud noise.  This event  was dead silent when we entered.  Obviously we know the crowd is quiet during matches but it is difficult to describe how strange it is to see that many people that quiet. 

Our seats were just as good in person as we expected, in fact they were just 10 tows behind Roddick’s and then Venus Williams’ friends and family box.  Not sure if anyone has seen Venus’ mom before but even from 10 rows back her hair was still a bit distracting.  Roddick delivered a great match winning in 3 sets and Williams pulled out a close one 2-1.  Add in a few Heinekens from the beer garden (thank you Nina!) and we had a pretty good afternoon!

As a bonus we were going to try to sneak in to see the Bryan brothers play a doubles match on one of the smaller side courts in the evening.  After about 10 minutes it hit us that we were working on about 4 hours of sleep after 30+ hours of travel and our bodies started to go into shut down mode (Luke’s more then April’s I’m sure she will tell you and I can admit).  We headed back to the hotel and barely could finish getting something to eat before falling asleep.  Great first day!