We were there, at the Summer Games

Wow, what a fortnight it has been!  Did you enjoy it ?

We spent a couple of days in London last week.  The crowd was unbelieveable. 

We started at Hyde Park, watching the Brownlee brothers and Hayes at the head of the pack, cycling for the Triathlon.

Then we head up to Wembley for some football. We stopped off at our hotel to drop our bags before going to the stadium. At the hotel, we spotted the badminton contingent from Indonesia. 

 

We watched the soon to be Olympic champions, Mexico play Japan in the semi-final.  There were plenty of Mexicans and Japanese holding up signs asking to buy tickets and I was tempted!

The Mexicans won a convincing 3-1, as predicted by H early on in the match. Sadly our Oracle couldn't "see" any more outcomes after that match.

Early next morning, we made our way to Stratford. Yay, we've arrived!

The Stadium is impressive (though not as big as it appeared on tv! ) and you get a very good view of everything.

We saw Mo Farah ran and qualified for the 5000m.

After the morning session at the Stadium finished, we explored the park. I love the large mirrored letters in front of the Copperbox. The wildflower meadow was quite impressive but I won't and can't be persuaded  to have wildflower in my own garden.

We queued to shop at the Megastore, worked out our route to the Basketball arena, sat by the river bank , walked back to the Orbit and sat some more to kill time before our alloted time to go up the Orbit.



We went up the lift, 80m to the top of the Orbit.  Look at all those people! The park was absolutely heaving at this point as the Stadium evening session has not started.

We looked at some weird mirrors up in the viewing platform.

Then we walked down.

And walked very fast back to the Basketball Arena for a Handball quarter final match between the Scandinavians, Denmark and Sweden. I think a lot of neutral spectators were secretly rooting for Denmark but sadly, Sweden won.

When we got out, it was time to go home. 

They were announcing asking people to go to West Ham for the fastest route into Central London.  We were part of a very small group to take this advice. The tube might have been fast but what they didn't tell you was it is over 30 walk minutes away from the gate of the Olympic Park. Very sore and very tired, 3 hours later, we were home.

What an amazing experience.  I wonder how this small patch of East London will fare once the crowd has departed and the temporary stadiums and arena dismantled. It will be interesting to see how the woodland and meadows mature.  I wonder if we can visit next year ? If not, we can get a good view from Westfield.