Well, once again very sorry for the delay in posting, but we flew into London early Friday morning and have been essentially non-stop since that time. Here is an update with pertinent photos. We will enjoy the last day of this huge excursion tomorrow and then fly back on Wednesday, arriving late that night in the comforts of StarkVegas. I don't know if I will post again before then, so enjoy...
June 27 - Day 11 - Jet Lag Times Two
We were already tired and tired some more when we arrived in Edinburgh early last week, but when we coupled that with a 6:15 a.m. flight from there to London on Friday, it hit us, and it hit hard. We were able to take a quick bus ride around London (with it raining on us again) before the brick wall nailed all of us around mid-afternoon. From there, it was to the hotel to check-in (we had to leave our bags with the hotel since check-in wasn't until 2) and absolutely crash. We all got 2-3 solid hours of rest-eye before taking in a nice supper in a pub in central London. That pretty much wrapped up our first day on the River Thames.
June 28 - Day 12 - London Hot Spots
Vivian and I took off Saturday and made a huge run around central London, hitting virtually all of the cliche tourist spots. Granted, most of these cliches have history dating back 500 years or more.
We pretty much took a west-to-east approach from our headquarters, which are situated directly behind the London Eye on the river. From there we cross the Thames, walked past Big Ben and Parliament (we looked for the Griswalds in the roundabout but didn't see them) for at least the third time already and started with Westminster Abbey. One of many destinations that has not allowed photography inside during our trip, it was truly a site to behold. Seeing the coronation chair that has been used for crownings since the 1300s. Many great names are also buried at the Abbey, including Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton.
From there, we marched northward to Buckingham Palace to catch the Changing of the Guard. We arrived for the 11:30 ceremony at around 10:50 and the place was packed, but we found a good spot to get the just of the show. The actual guard house is located just south-southeast of the Palace and we had seen that coming in, so calculated where a solid place might be. Got some great pics here (see full gallery below this entry).
After escaping the Saturday morning crowd, we walked south and hitched our first ride on The Tube, London's subway system, which is most certainly the way to get around here. We rode that over to St. Paul's Cathedral for our second sanctuary stop of the day. We wanted to visit both Westminster and St. Paul's on Saturday because they do actual hold Sunday services and are closed to the public as a result. St. Paul's is, like Westminster, a grand structure with amazing architecture. No photos allowed again, but they were at the top of the facility - from the landmark dome that sits atop. To get there, you only have to climb 530 stairs. We did. It was fun. Coming down. But the trek up afforded some great views of the city from above as well as an interesting look at the structure and building schema of St. Paul's from within.
Continuing our blazing tour of the north side of the river, we hopped on the Tube again, exiting at Tower Hill station, which left us just a stone's throw from The Tower of London. There, we again saw all the history surrounding it, including the Crown Jewels (just can't keep Viv away from those diamonds!), the Ravens and other items of interest. It was also cool to see the moat surrounding it, part of which still looked workable.
Following that whirlwind of a day, we took the remain few hours of daylight we had and walked back along the north edge of the river, taking in the city from that angle at a slightly slower pace. At dusk, I wanted to work on my night photography skills a bit, so I concentrated on (you guessed it) Big Ben and Parliament across the river from our hotel. A little tidbit for you, btw, and I did not know this coming over here - Big Ben refers to the largest of the five bells inside the clock tower, not the tower or the clock.
That night, we slept VERY well.
June 29 - Day 13 - Standing on Both Sides of the World; Are We Camping Out?
On Sunday, we walked about the city a bit more in the morning, one of the stops coming at 85 Vauxhall Cross, better known as MI6, even better known as the British Secret Intelligence Service. Needless to say, I had to visit this facility building and, if you don't know why, you don't know me very well.
That came before taking our first excursion outside of our central London cocoon that afternoon to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, just a few miles east. That trip was a great treat, getting to see the famous Prime Meridian which, as you should all know, divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the earth and is situated at zero degrees longitude. It is also the line which, since the late 19th century, has served as the reference line for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
One thing that was interesting about the Prime Meridian was that GPS units (yes, I had mine with me) don't actually zero out right on the line. Instead I found mine doing that about 330 feet east. The reason for that, I was told by the experts at the observatory, is twofold:
1) The Earth is a geoid (has an irregular surface) and the universal GPS datum (WGS84) is a different measurement
2) Continental drift has caused slight variations over time
So there's your science lesson for today.
Our trip to and from Greenwich, which also included a visit to the nearby National Maritime Museum, was not a pleasant one as half of the Tube line we expected to take was down for weekend repairs. But they were kind enough to offer us a free bus trip for the second leg of our journey in both directions.
During the past few days I had been trying to reach my good friend, coach Andy Jackson, who, as you recall from an early post in this blog, was working on Wimbledon ducats for us many moons ago. Well, CJ finally gave me a call on Sunday evening and had tough news to deliver - no luck on finding any Centre Court passes for us. As luck would have it, he did not travel to London for the 2008 Championships for the only like the second time in the past 15-20 years (or something like that - you get the idea). That, combined with the fact that the influential folks he had contacted about helping us out just couldn't help on this occasion. We appreciated everything he did in trying, though, and moved on to our final options (CJ, if you read this, please don't feel bad anymore - it's ok, really).
I had worked the web some Sunday afternoon just to see if I could find anything on uk.ebay.com or anywhere else, just for the 30th (we had decided on Friday that Monday was the day to target since Roger Federer was playing Lleyton Hewitt followed by the upstart Brit Andy Murray later in the day (Nadal was playing too, but I'm no more of a fan of his than that guy who plays golf well). Anyhow, couldn't find much luck on the web. I texted one guy about a message board post for two CC tix for Monday for 220 pounds. Turns out he wanted 500 pounds for both of 'em and that's one grand in U.S. funding, folks - too rich for this man's blood for one day of tennis.
The absolute last option was camping out at Wimbledon overnight Sunday night and be among the first 500 in the queue (that's the nice, proper British way of saying standing in line) when the gates opened Monday morning. That would guarantee us Centre Court access for the day. To our credit, we did go out there that evening around 9 o'clock (with nothing but a small suitcase of necessities just in case we decided to do it) and checked the queue. Our numbers would have been 946 and 947. Those would have guaranteed us Court 1 tickets, but the match we really wanted to see (Federer) was on the grandaddy - Centre - and I knew our chances were not good at getting two of the 500 tickets to that court, with the local hero Murray on the schedule of play as well. So, after meeting a guy from Canada who was a first-time queuer as well, we decided to bag that plan for a good night's sleep in our hotel and arose early Monday to again join the queue, but for grounds passes only, which allow you only onto courts 2-19, still some great tennis.
But let me just say this - had I known 48 hours ago what I know about that process now, we would have bought a tent, arrived Sunday around Noon with everything we could possibly need for the next 18 hours, spent the day in the queue, and slept on the grounds of Wimbledon Park Sunday night. I couldn't think of a greater story. But to be honest, what we really got us in this situation was Andy Murray. Had he not made the round of 16, or not been playing as part of the Centre Court ticket on Monday, we probably would have had a chance to see Federer play in person. What we heard on Monday was that the folks who got the 500th ticket for that court were in the queue Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. As a comparison, when we left Monday night around 7 p.m. and walked past that same queue of tents (there for Tuesday), there appeared to only be about 100 in line. Regardless of all that jibberish, we would still walk the hallowed grounds on Monday and it would be memorable...
June 30 - Day 14 - The Championships, Wimbledon
We arose Monday morning at a still pretty early time, just not on the damp ground at Wimbledon. We left the hotel around 7 a.m. and jumped on the Tube again at Waterloo station, changed at Westminster and travel the 10 stops out to Wimbledon. We joined the queue (same numbering from the night before) and were #s 3838 and 3839. That was a relief because we knew that pretty much guaranteed we were getting in for the day (they typically allow 6,000 grounds passes).
That was at about 8:30. A cat-nap or two and a lot of standing up and sitting down on the ground later and we finally walked through the turnstiles around 10:45. That all may seem tedious, but the queueing system at Wimbledon is really quite remarkable. I can't describe it other than to say (1) yes, there is waiting, (2) they make you feel good about it and do a good job of administering it and (3) the experience is unforgettable because your doing it with about 8-10,000 other people who want the same thing. In fact, while in line, we talked briefly with folks behind us who turned out to be from Kansas City and Milwaukee.
OK...we enter are now inside the gates of the AELTC! Awesome.
The first thing we did was walk over to the practice courts to see what players we might catch practicing (matches didn't start until around Noon). Didn't really see anybody notable that we recognized other than Marco Baghdatis, who we would see fall in a crazy five-set match on court 18 later in the day with Felipe Lopez.
Then we found some grub and positioned ourselves on Henman Hill, named so because of all the Brits who've parked it there over the years watching the big screen for crowd favourite Tim Henman to try and break the British title jinx. From there, we watched Federer struggle with Hewitt for a set before rolling past him into the quarterfinals. I did manage to sneak a shot of Centre Court while they were playing and was actually able to get pretty close to the court before the match started.
The remainder of the day, in a nutshell, we pretty much just took in the ambiance of being there, catching pieces of different matches here there, including some junior players, walking around the grounds and, of course, having some strawberries and cream! We left about the time Murray was down two sets to Richard Gasquet. When we arrived at the hotel, we were amazed to see he was serving for the match in the fifth set. We saw all the crazies packed into Henman Hill on TV and we both thought, "we were just there!"
The experience will be, of course, unforgettable and hopefully not the last of my lifetime at the AELTC.
Once again, I'm tired. I'm truly looking forward to my own bed now. I'm not looking forward to 90 degrees. See or talk to you all soon...BTW, if you didn't get the title of this entry, contact Roger Miller.
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