London Olympics 2012 viii

Saturday was our big day, we had tickets.

It was probably a year ago that we went in to the ballot for Olympics tickets, we went in for about 5 sets of tickets but only got one lot, for hockey.

The hockey was played at the Riverbank Arena which is a temporary stadium constructed, pretty much just of scaffolding.

We were looking forward to the hockey but what I was most excited about was getting in to the Olympic Park, where the Olympic stadium and many other stadia were including the velodrome, the aquatic centre, BMX track, basketball and handball.

I'll start with the hockey and then move on to the Olympic Park.

It was an early start, the hockey started at 8.30. The transport planner said it was about 1 hr 30 min to get to the stadium, so we would have to leave by around 6.30 to get to the park in good time to get our seats.

We had a snag on the way with the tube stop we were were planning on using being closed. A bus journey and tube from London Waterloo got us to the park on time though.



Our tickets were for the relatively insignificant matches, 11th &12th and 5th &6th playoffs. Not quite sure why they even bother with these games but hay, it gave us an opportunity to get tickets to the Olympics. We hadn't even had a good look at who we were going to be watching. Turned out we would be seeing India v South Africa for the 11th and 12th playoff followed by Spain and Belgium in the 5th and 6th playoff.

We got to our seats (second row from the back), Theo had his own seat and we had a couple of spare seats on one side. Being so high up had some benefits, not the least being catching the cooling breeze, because it was hot and sunny.

The hockey was good, not great, quite a few goals which kept it interesting but I think it showed why these teams were not competing for medals. It was interesting for me because I didn't know all the rules for hockey, it was good to have Jackie there to talk me through it.







In between the two hockey matches we headed out for a quick walk and a waffle and coffee. We had seen a few food places that we were looking forward to visiting looking later on too.

After the hockey we started exploring the park. We stopped for lunch, I had a a Spanish sausage in a bun and a burrito, Jackie had a burrito. One of the great things about the Olympic park was a great variety of food and a good number of seats and tables to sit at while eating.








We carried on exploring the Olympic park after lunch including walking around the stadium. More impressive than the stadium itself was the landscaping around the stadium and around the Olympic park. The gardens, wild flowers and trees made the Olympic park such a comfortable, peaceful environment, even with  hundreds of thousand of people lurking around.















After a walk around, we made our way to park live, an area of the Olympic park with two massive screens where you could watch live events with a great Olympic atmosphere. We found a great spot, there was plenty of room for Theo (and me) to crawl around. Probably the highlight of the day was that we were able to watch Mo Farah win the 5000m on the big screens with all the crowds and atmosphere, everyone was jumping up and down and you could hear the cheers from the stadium adding to the cheers from 'park live'.







Shortly after this event we made our way towards the exit, passing through the Westfield shopping centre which was built for the Olympics. there were crowds at the restaurants and bars here, the buzz didn't really stop until we were back in Streatham.



It was a long day but one of the most incredible experiences, certainly up there with the top sporting experiences I've ever had. I might never have another chance of attending an Olympics and count myself lucky that I have been able to experience so many events at one Olympics. We'd love to go the the Olympics in Brazil, perhaps if one of the family was competing we'd have a good excuse. Perhaps we can go back and watch Zane play for NZ in hockey, I think that would be reason enough to make a trip to Brazil!