The Walter Blog: August 2012

After the breakfast from the hotel, powdered scrambled eggs, sausage and some juice for me and cereal and toast for the rest of them, we started our day. I think we’re all ready for some home cooking. Rylee has had a hankering for some good ole Apple Pie. We told her she’d have to wait until we get home. We had a little time to kill before our Volleyball event at 2:45 so we decided to go back to Piccadilly Circus since Rylee really wanted to stop at one of the shops we had been to last time we were in London. We picked up some knickknacks but still hadn’t found a Christmas ornament for our tree. One of the things we try and do is to pick up an ornament for our Christmas tree when we go on a big family vacation. Every year as we’re putting up the tree, we remember where and when we got the ornament and it helps remind us of the trips we’ve been on. We haven’t been able to find one until we walked past a Lladro, or Lardo as Jarret pronounced it, store. They did have a 2012 ornament for 65 Pounds. It was a little spendy but we figured we’re only here once…..until we got the bill in US dollars - $106……oh that darn exchange rate that is so easy to forget about. You know we can’t change our mind at this point, the only benefit that we get is that if it breaks within the next year, we can get it replaced.

We walked to the tube stop and on the way came across a little market set up in the courtyard of an old church. They had some neat little items but nothing that we couldn’t do without.

It was now time to head to the Earls Court Arena where the volleyball was going to be played. We got to see two matches, the first was Russia vs Tunisia and Russia won the match pretty easily. Russia does have a 7 foot 2 inch middle that can really hit the ball. He was fun to watch. There were quite a few empty seats for the first game.

The second game was Poland vs Argentina and this was a much more rowdy game. The fans filled the stadium and I bet ¾ of them were rooting for Poland. They were yelling, singing, and making a lot of noise. Poland won the match in 3 games but it was fun to watch, especially with the crowd. We must have been the only Americans in a raucous sea of Polska fans. Needless to say, we quickly became Polish fans. After the game was over, the Polish fans continued with their singing as they were exiting the arena. I told Jarret he should start a USA chant but we would have been drowned out very easily.

We stopped for dinner on the way home at a place that wasn’t very good. As we got to the hotel, we figured that we’d better start repacking everything tonight. Our suitcases will be brimming with stinky, dirty clothes as the hotels here don’t offer do-it-yourself laundry. And we’re too close to the end of our trip to wash anything more in the bathroom sink! Besides, with the humidity here, nothing would dry in time. Hopefully we won’t need to purchase a new bag to bring our souvenirs home. We also did our last Skype session with Dave Cotton at KHQ.

Jill and I were talking and both of us would like to come back to London again someday. It really is a nice place to visit, even if it is a little more expensive than other towns. There is so much to do and see that you can’t begin to see it all in one trip. As much as we like London, we’re ready to come home. We’ve been on the go, non-stop, for about 2 weeks now. We pretty much figured we haven’t been more than 20 feet away from each other for any length of time in the last two weeks. Rylee and Jarret have done well on the trip but I think they’re tired of not being able to have their own space. Tomorrow we get on the plane and head back to the states. And then we have to drive back from Seattle. I don’t think we’re going to spend the night in Seattle. If we’re that close to home, we might as well load up on coffee and junk food and make the drive home. This has been the trip of a lifetime and I’m so glad that it has gone so well. It’s been especially nice to take the trip as a family and share it with all of you.

It’s always such a rush to be at a live Olympic event and witness the dedication and years of training these athletes have endured. When we sit in the arena and cheer for them all, there is just nothing like the spirit of it. But we have missed watching the Americans compete and reading about it. We’re glad there’s another week of competition so we can watch it from home.

Jill: I need to send a big shout-out to Craig for pretty much organizing this amazing trip. He has done the research, purchased all the tickets (Olympic, plane, tube, Metro, Eurostar), and has been our expert map-reader. He enjoys figuring out where we are, and how to get from point A to point B, and we follow along like little puppies. He was the keeper of the subway and light rail tickets, and always told us to go “right!” or “left!” or “straight ahead!” as we jumped off the subways and tried to find the exits. You made our trip great, thank you!

Where are we going next??

An outdoor market in the courtyard of an old church

Row of apartments as we walk towards Earl's Court

Earl's Court

Volleyball

Olympic Rings

7 ft 2 in middle - He can really get up there

Action in Russia - Tunisia game

Another one of the big middle

Olympic flag

Three trouble makers

Poland vs Argentina

More action

A wall

The crowd as we're leaving volleyball

Jarret wants this for his first car - it's a Ferrari

We started the day by trying to get some tickets for an event in the Olympic Park that Jill and Rylee could attend. If you have a ticket, you can enter the Olympic park. If you don’t have a ticket, you can’t get in. It looks like the 2012 Olympic site releases tickets each day but we were unable to get any. Without two tickets, Jill and Rylee were going to have to go shopping at the big mall just outside the Olympic Park while Jarret and I went to the swimming event. I felt bad that we all couldn’t attend but we tried really hard to get some tickets and it just didn’t work out. There’s been a lot of negative press concerning the tickets and how they’re being distributed. It sounds like there are a lot of events where tickets are being unused and the arena is partially empty. Quite a few of these tickets went to sponsors and not the general public and now the public is upset. I don’t blame them. That was a bad.

Today we had time in the morning and the afternoon to kill before the swimming event in the evening. We didn’t want to go too far so we found that there was a Live London site where they have music and activities and show the games on a big screen TV. It was at a place called Victoria Park that wasn’t too far from either our hotel or the Olympic park. We took the rail and tube to get there and then started following the signs. At one point, there was a sign that said – to London Live via the Floating Market, so we decided to take this route. It was a nice little walk along a canal that eventually leads to the Limehouse Basin with the houseboats that is near our hotel. The interesting thing about the Floating Market is that in the canal are boats that sell things. Books, hats and different types of food are the ones that we saw. There wasn’t much activity. I don’t know if it was because it was a weekday or because the weather wasn’t that good. It would be a unique experience to see when everything was open.

We worked our way into the park to where the Live London site was and had to go through security. One of the questions the person asked me was do I have any deodorant? Not understanding exactly what he was asking I said “ Do I need it?” and he took a sniff as a joke. What he really meant was do we have any aerosol cans. The other thing that actually did cause us a problem was our video camera. It turns out that you can’t take a video camera into the London Live site. He was polite and asked his supervisor but they said no even though I said I wouldn’t use it and that we didn’t have any place that we could leave it. I did ask about cell phones that take video and they said those are fine. It really ticked us off. It makes no sense that a video taken by cell is fine but one taken by a video camera isn’t. That was the bad.

We did manage to see the mayor of London and I thought Jill was going to go up to him and ask him if he knew about that policy. We just decided to go on our merry way and not spend any money with them.

As we headed back, it was getting around lunch time and we had passed a restaurant called the Greedy Cow. Since Rylee’s into cows, she wanted to go there. The place was really small but it was mainly a hamburger place in the afternoon. Man they made a great burger, in fact it was probably one of the best ones I’ve had in a long time. The waiter said they were very happy to hear that Americans like their hamburgers since the hamburger was basically created in the states. If we had gotten into London Live, we probably would have never gone to this restaurant. That was a good.

After lunch we had more time to kill. We took a train to Canary Wharf. We’d heard it was famous but we weren’t sure why. I pictured something like the piers in Seattle. It was totally different. Our previous excursions in London were mainly in the older part. Big buildings, old monuments, and large bridges were what we had been accustomed to seeing. This wasn’t the case at Canary Wharf. You could get down to the water but it was mainly a big business and financial area with lots of professionals and new buildings. We walked around a little bit and caught part of a cycling event on a big screen. Bradley Wiggins won gold in his race and the crowd cheered and then slowly drifted off back to work. It was fun to watch. This was good.

We finally headed back to the Olympic Park so that Jarret and I could attend swimming. Before we headed out, we got our game plan on where to meet up after it was over. We also were going to Skype with KHQ again but it didn’t work out because I guess there was a grass fire in Spokane that they were covering. Jarret and I headed to the swimming event and Rylee and Jill were going to spend time in the mall. All four of us not being able to see the event was bad.

The Aquatics Centre has been built with temporary seating so that they can get as many people as they can in there to watch the event. We ended up sitting 4 rows from the top. We’ve been on some climbs this trip and this one was as hard as any of them. Maybe it was because I was lugging the backpack this time or because I’m just tired of going up stairs, either way I’m glad I went to the bathroom and got some food before the climb since there is nothing up there other than seats. It was a long distance between where we were and the pool but you could still see all of the lanes in the pool. Once the Olympics are over, I think I’ve heard they’ll remove the temporary seats so that it’s quite a bit smaller. One other thing that was frustrating was that the two seats next to me were empty the whole time. That’s pretty ironic that we’ve been looking for two seats for over a year and they ended up being right next to me. That was bad.

The actual event was fantastic. When one of the British swimmers took second, the crowd exploded. It was really fun to be a part of it. In the middle of one of the events, I got a Skype call from KHQ. I couldn’t hear him. I just answered the phone and turned up the volume so that they could hear the crowd roar. I think they got a kick out of it but I was able to hear that they wanted to try it again at 12:00 PM Pacific Time. He did call and we did Skype for just a minute because it got noisy again and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. In two of the races, Americans won gold and it was really fun to watch. Both the race and the reaction of the crowd were very fun. After the final race, they awarded the gold, silver and bronze medals to the winners. It’s really quite special to see the athletes from your country win a gold medal and be able to hear your national anthem. In all of the commercialism of sports, it’s heartwarming to see that playing for their country still means something to them. It also make us fans feel special too. Thanks to all the athletes for their hard work and thanks to Jill and Rylee for taking one for the team. It was also special to share that event with Jarret. This was really good.

Today the good outweighed the bad. We’ve only got a couple days left and we’re starting to get that “It’ll be good to be home” feeling. I’ll probably post some pictures tomorrow since it’s so late now. Heading to sleep and looking forward to Volleyball tomorrow.

Woke up and posted the pictures from yesterday.