Happy New Year from Us in the UK

Welcome to my 100th post! 

A special Thank You to my loyal readers who have read every single one of these posts. That's a lot of reading! It has been fun writing and sharing our adventures with you all.  Only a few more months until the blog comes to a closing, so soak it up...I know I am! And sorry about the backlog of posts, I have had a few "in waiting" so I could get caught up.

After driving back from Belgium on the 31st, we stopped into our hotel to nap and get ready for the night time festivities.  We drove to an Underground station we usually park, and rode into the city centre of London.  We bought tickets to watch the fireworks go off the London Eye (ferris wheel) at midnight to bring in the new year.  This was the first year the Mayor of London decided to do tickets to watch the fireworks. Even though there was crowd control...it was so packed!

We got in line around 6:40, and they began letting people in the embankment area (on the River Thames).  We posted up by at tree....and stood for the next 5 hours.  Not so fun when it was so windy and cold.  Jeff said this event had his four most hatred things: crowds, cold, being around drunk people & not drinking, and waiting. Needless to say, it wasn't the most enjoyable experience...and I definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone next year.

 Our view

 Our loyal tree

Massive amounts of people near the large speakers

Either way, we were able to experience a once in a lifetime event and we were glad we did it.  Well at least one of us...There wasn't any live entertainment, but they had music playing on these large speakers.  A DJ came on the speakers around 9 to get everyone pumped up.  The crowd was very diverse as I heard many different languages being spoken.  Not too many kids, and a variety of moods (some hating every moment and others dancing around like fools).

Obviously, the fireworks went off at midnight.  It was a pretty impressive amount of fireworks that lasted about 10 minutes.  We were able to get a few good shots and video.  The minute the fireworks were done, Queen (Not THE Queen, but the band) came on the speakers live and played as the massive amounts of people headed to the few amount of exits.  100,000 people...enough said.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to our car.  Free public transportation, so everyone was using it.  We had to walk quite a while before finding an Underground station that didn't have loads of people.  We hopped in our car, headed back to our hotel, and were asleep by 3 AM.

 Leading up to the New Year, the London Eye would change colors

 You could see the London Eye perfectly in the beginning. Once the fireworks were in full swing, there was so much smoke it became hard to see.

 

London Eye is fading away with the amount of smoke in the air

Turn your head to the side to see the video the correct way. But hey, it's fireworks...they don't need to be viewed in a certain way!

It was pretty funny to think that by the time we were getting ready to go to bed, our friends and family in the states had not even experienced the New Year.  (Differences: 5 hr= Indiana; 6 hr=Illinois; 8 hr=California).  Our New Year is already off to a great start, as I hope yours is as well. Look out for our 2014 Wrap Up Post in the coming days.

 Not the clearest picture, but this was taken after all the fireworks

 London was really beautiful that night, as the buildings are not always this lit up. If you look closely, Jeff's favorite building, The Shard, had 2015 lit up vertically on the side of it.

On to the next adventure...

Centre Court Bound: Wimbledon 2014

It would be pretty funny to be a fly on the wall in our house the Sunday before heading to Wimbledon on Tuesday (June 24th). We really wanted Centre Court tickets so we would be able to see the "big names" play.  Jeff definitely did his research on the topic of getting tickets. Our original plan was to stand in "The Queue" which is basically like camping in a large line for tickets.  I was not really feeling this idea considering right after Wimbledon we're heading for the United States for 2-weeks. There was just a lot going on. Because of Jeff's researching skills, he thought we may have a chance to get tickets from Ticketmaster.com but we'd have to be prepared and ready to buy them when the chance came.  Come 9:00 on Sunday morning, it was our practice round to get tickets from Ticketmaster.  I say practice round because these tickets would be for Monday, and we were planning on going on Tuesday.  We both had our computers out with the website up (2 tabs each), and when 9:00 came and the tickets were available Jeff and I kept typing information in and clicking refresh.  About 10 minutes into doing this, it wasn't looking too promising until I got 2 tickets! We obviously didn't buy them, but we now knew what to expect for when our Tuesday tickets became available jn a few hours from that point.  When noon came around, we had the same process.  We were really hoping we could get lucky as we didn't want to camp out the night before Wimbledon. Same thing on this one...around 16 minutes later Jeff got us 2 tickets! We were so excited and bought them right away.  We felt so lucky, and didn't have to leave for Wimbledon until 5:00 in the morning. What a relief!

And off to Wimbledon...

We were able to watch quite a few matches during our day of tennis.  When they opened the courts, we went to a smaller court because there were open seats. You can get general admission to watch courts 3-18 and watch the big matches on The Hill. We went to Court 16 to watch an Australian Vs. French guy. I don't remember their names, but we rooted for the French guy because he seemed to be older and more confident.  As we were sitting there we enjoyed the surroundings, especially all of the wealthy people dressed all fancy.  They were up on a balcony level, drinking & carrying on. We watched a few sets, and then headed to eat our sack lunches on The Hill to watch Federer.  It was packed with people cheering, drinking, and enjoying the beautiful day.

 Court 16 fun! You can also see the balcony area that the fancy people get to hang out on above Jeff's head. 

 

I was laughing pretty hard at this picture because I thought it looked like the Umpire was floating. So. Much. Green. 

We were the only ones rooting against this guy. We wanted the French guy to win, and apparently no one in England wanted that to happen. The Australian won. 

The Hill 

Another part that was fun to watch was the organization and repetition of the line judges and ball-people.  They had a system they followed throughout each point, game, and set.  They would rotate around the courts and do the same moves to let the professional player know they had a ball.  I enjoyed that part a little too much, I think. Had I been thinking about it...I would have video taped them. 

We ended our day watching Nadal, Serena, and one other match on Centre Court.  Our seats were on the top row, but since the facility was smaller, the top seats were still good seats! I had a nice view of the Royal section, but no one that I recognized was in that section.  Although, they did receive the "Royal Treatment" when the sun rotated and was in their face.  A guard came out with hats to give each one of them. I'm still waiting on my hat...

 

If you look closely, the Royal Section is to the right in the picture with the wooden barrier around them. 

Representin' Row ZF

We enjoyed the matches, and even took a break to get a Pimm's (Liquor with fruit in it) and strawberries & cream (strawberries with a liquefied cream drizzled on top). They were both great and a Wimbledon specialty.  While looking for a description to link on strawberries & cream, I found this list of how much Wimbledon has to provide in terms of food. The numbers are pretty crazy!

Jeff holding his Pimm's while sitting on The Hill watching Federer! 

Strawberries & Cream. I think we got one of the last batches before they made new ones...ours didn't look quite as creamy as others. 

We enjoyed one last match on Centre Court before we headed back to the hotel around 8:00 PM to get ready for our big trip home to the U.S.A. Woot Woot!

We moved down a little closer for the "no name" match. You can see the crowds dispersed once Serena was done playing.