goodbye stuart rd

Photos taken from our final night at Stuart Rd... we headed to the Grand Union for one last meal together....

Lisa, Jess and Mateo at the Grand Union

Blake, Lisa, Jess (top row); Mateo, Renee, Al and Dan (bottom row)

 

windsor.

With only a few weekends left in London, it was time for some much needed sightseeing. Still managed to get to basketball on saturday, however it was a jam packed day, ending with having dinner with Matt and Di, who had one night in London before flying out to Malta.
Saturday 8th July: we checked out westminister abbey and St Pauls
Sunday 9th July: a visit to Windsor castle. For 14 pounds, probably a lot better things to spend your money on within London.

"where are we" at Windsor Castle

next stop... Lisbon. forecast is for mid 30's - can't wait!

wimby - 2006

Sat 1st July - a very early start for Lisa and me. Wake up at 4.30am for a taxi pickup at 5am, to arrive at Wimbledon at 5.30am. Why so early you ask? to join the queue of course!

We were Number 1387 and 1388 in the queue. There were a lot of people that had camped over and with the sun coming up, people were just getting out of their tents and heading to the many food stalls that were offering breakfast and coffee.

The queue card given to us on arrival

The queuing has been going on for some time, so when we first arrived, along with our queue number, we were also given a guide to queuing - you can't save spots; you can leave the queue for small periods (eg to go to bathroom, get food, etc); no queue number, no entrance into the grounds.

We sat on the oval in our line probably for an hour and a half - then we started to move. Plenty of old friendly stewards (who all seemed very British) to help direct us, and certainly add to the wimbledon vibe.

in the queue waiting for tickets... will we get onto the show courts?

Just after 9.30, we managed to go through the security check, and so I guess we officially queued for 4.5 hours - but it really did fly by. There was plenty always going on around us. The bad news was that even though we got there so early, we still ended up with ground pass tickets only. The man behind us queued about the same time 2 years ago, and was able to get court 2 tickets (the order of valuable tickets was: centre court, court 1, court 2, ground pass) so we had hoped.... You could see the people who had managed to get the show court tickets - they were the ones with the coloured wrist bands. Crazily enough, there were 6 people at the front of the queue who were actually queuing for monday's tickets!

With the newspaper that we had bought in the queue, the order of play was the next thing we had to tackle. Being the 3rd round, there was always going to be plenty of matches on, and quite a few aussies on show. This also meant that there were a LOT of aussie supporters around - and this made seeing any of the aussies play particularly difficult.

We started the day checking out Myskina play - for those who don't know, she is the one who's face looks quite similar to Lisa's. Match was pretty uneventful - Myskina cruised through after a slow start; we did get introduced to the 'wimbledon wave' - its a wave through the crowd that goes around 3 times with a 'celebration wave', a 'hissing wave', and finally a 'slow motion wave' - with the 3rd providing quite a humourous spectacle.

After the match, we raced off to check out Lleyton on court 2 - turned out to be a 2 hour wait to get into the standing area, so our last chance was possibly standing on the back row of court 3 (court 2 and 3 are back to back) - alas, they were completely taken as well.

The order of play - lots of big names on show today!

With no chance of seeing his match, there was another big match on at the same time - Agassi/Nadal. So we headed to Henman Hill (aka Murray Mount), and found a nice relaxing position to watch the rest of that match. Agassi was just not his same self, and the winners and running around that I was so used to seeing from him, was being done by Nadal, who made some impossible shots look easy.

With that match over, they did show the remainder of the Lleyton match on the big screen. The one thing they didn't show at the grounds was the football - They kept flashing up on the big screen "the world cup England game will not be shown here. we will occasionally show score updates".

As was to be expected, a mass exodus just before 4pm occured as people headed off to watch the football. We decided it was time to get some food (strawberries and cream rock!) and work out what else to check out.

The remaining 2 hours we spent there, we checked out a few different matches - saw the end of Samantha Stosur/Lisa Raymond playing doubles, which they won. Alicia Molik and Wayne Arthurs were playing last match one of the courts - at 6pm, they were still 2 matches away from playing, so we decided to call it quits.

The football, which had reached extra time by this stage, was still going on, so we managed to find a little food stall on the side streets of wimbledon that had a small crowd gathering to watch the game through a little tv. the penalty shootout would have been so cruel if you were English.

So on the whole, a great day out to the tennis - just being there, and soaking up all the atmosphere was a lot of fun.