23rd of June
Within only a few hours being in the UK I had gotten tickets to Wimbledon! My host family had come into a couple of tickets they were not going to be able to use, so they gave them to me and one of my teammates. We just had to pay to get ourselves down to the tournament, which is in London. So yesterday morning (Tuesday the 21st), after a short train ride to Liverpool, Paul Seddon and I took the train down to London Euston, and from there the metro to Wimbledon. We arrived right around noon, which is when play starts on most of the smaller courts, so we walked around some of the courts before going to our seats since play on Centre Court did not start until 1pm. Our seats were just below the cameras for television, which was fairly close to the court. The grounds are beautiful and the smaller courts are all unreserved seating, so you can watch any match you wish. Many of these smaller courts have only three rows of seats separating the path from the court, and the players seem as though they are within touching distance which makes for a great atmosphere.
We made our way to our seats on Centre Court for the first match between Serena Williams and someone I cannot remember. It was a bit surreal to see athletes in person I had only ever seen on television. Serena was pushed to a third set, but came through rather easily as she found her form in what was an entertaining first match of the day. We left after the match, not realizing how quickly the Federer would be playing, to go have a look around the grounds and see some of the matches going taking place on the smaller courts. By the time we got back to Centre Court, Federer was winning the first set 6-5. I will not bore you with the results you can easily find online, but at the end of play on Centre Court we had seen Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Maria Sharapova all live and in person, and all win their respective matches. The longest break we took from Centre Court was when play was scheduled to stop after Djokovic (the Sharapova match was changed later). During this time we watched some of the other matches taking place. All of the smaller courts have unreserved seating, but most of them were taken and Paul and I were forced to stand on our toes to watch the play. We were able to partake in one of the traditions of Wimbledon, strawberries and cream, but Pimms was far too expensive at £7 a glass.
The return to Liverpool was rather interesting because we misread our tickets, and instead of the train leaving at 0948 from Euston it left at 2107. So we arrived at the station in plenty of time, if it had left at 9:48. We were forced to take a different train to Manchester and get off in Crewe, from where we took a taxi to get close to home. Eventually we got home safely, which is all that matters.
I will post some pictures on facebook...
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