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Published: July 29th 2012
The West Lawn
Olympic Park has an East and West Lawn with large Jumbotrons showing other events that are currently underway.Today we woke up early and had a nice continental breakfast in the dining room of our hotel at the K K Hotel which overlooks a beautiful garden. This could be a veritable feast ! But we persevered through adversity and filled our plates... And palates. Our day has begun !
We hopped on the tube, which is fantastic and took the train and bussed from the transit center to the North Greenwich Arena formerly known as the Millennium arena where the Artistic Gymnastics event was held.
We arrived early via the West Hamm tube station. We walked to the arena and had a cup of coffee at one of the restaurants inside the venue.
Once we were ready to to go in, Jeff had quite a lengthy discussion with security as he brought in his camera bag and the security person claimed that we was not allowed to take his camera bag in to the venue as each venue has its own rules.
Jeff, will likely reply that this may be slightly embellished and since he is a lawyer, i feel compelled to inform you was successful in his first trial in Great Britain. He was permitted to leave only his telescopic lens at security for the artistic gymnastics event and not the whole camera bag... It was, i must say, a rather protracted, amicable, but successful trial with a security guard and I must and will say, yet again, Jeff was splendid in his counter inquiry of the guard even with the guard trying to read Jeff the rules on the lenses, in fact several times... He even showed Jeff the rules, and kept going back to showing him the rules, yet nowhere did the rules seem to imply someone should make Jeff trade his entire camera bag for a small piece of pink paper with a number on it.. It hardly seems fair, but then again, we are americans!
This is likely the appropriate time to say that it should be duly noted that the security guard was dressed in purple and pink. Hardly, the redcoats we're so familiar with from our high school textbooks from yes, sadly, years ago now.. So, on we tread, Jeff smiling ear to ear with pink paper with a number on it along with his name scribbled on the back - grand what technology has granted us.. And his backpack full of camera stuff minus one telescopic lens to the Artistic Gymnastics event we had an Olympic ticket to watch...
Our first Olymic experience was Artistic Gymnastics. Say that again? This is a first to me as I am very familiar with Gymnastics, you know, the pommel horse, rings, floor exercise, parallel bars, horizontal bar, all around etc etc etc. Anyway, it was a pleasure watching the Saudi Arabian, great Britain, Korean, Chinese, czechoslovakian and French men's teams competing at 11 AM rotating every 20 minutes or so. The Brits came out ahead at the end of our session ahead of the Chinese ... Maybe that was the artistic part... Which surprised us !
Once we were done, we were off to the Olympic Park for the Swimming events! Michael Phelps vs Ryan Lochte !!!
Entering the Olympic Park was fascinating as we were asked to show our tickets four times before we reached security... Once in, I marveled that Jeff had all of his lenses, camera bag intact and in the Olympic Park. We started to walk as we were walking toward the Olympic Stadium (where Opening Ceremonies were held) directly ahead of us and it was rather quiet as we came in with no crowds whatsoever. We stopped for lunch and walked around to see the venues, big expanses for people to fill. What a huge area !! We ended up sitting down on the West lawn along the river where they had a big TV screen facing us and directly behind it was another screen facing the East lawn with lots of people sitting on the grass watching the beach volleyball competition. We both took about a 20 minute cat nap on the grass as it was pleasant day and we were tired. We walked through the park and went through the BMW Experience along the river and went quite a ways down just on a nice walk.
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Barb Finley
non-member comment
Hi!
Jeff and Pat- Thanks for the photos!!! Say hello to Andrew Dean for us tonight- keep us posted on your pursuit of the world's best nachos... ENJOY!!!!