Olympians!!

Hello Dear Readers,

So I have lots of photos and fun from my cousin Elias' trip to London, but first, I want to share with you some of Chris and mine Olympic experiences from the last week.  Fresh on the heels of the closing ceremonies, here are some shots of my Olympic experience in London 2012!!

 Here is Chris, Patrick and I gathered on Saturday August 7th at Hyde Park.  We left at the ungodly hour of 7 am on a Saturday to line up with thousands of other people, Londoners, foreigners and everything in between.  Too bad we didn't have any American swag with us, but I'm in blue and red, and so is Pat, we gave it our best. (Cyprus won their first Olympic medal EVER - silver in the sailing, maybe Chris is wearing silver for them?)

 Here is the lead cyclist for the women's triathlon in Hyde park...... they did 7 laps of this, and 4 of running......

 ....... and there they go, woosh!  I'm glad they did several laps or else it would have been a long trip for very little pay off.  A Swiss girl won it and there were quite a few Swiss in the crowd around us so it was a great atmosphere.  Of course we had to walk around the entirety of Hyde Park just to get back to South Kensington and get out of there, but it was a good chance to show Elias the sights..


 And here is a giant basketball arena!!

Woah, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Love, Kevan Durant........ Susan Clark, eat your heart out!
Patrick's friend gave him tickets to the basketball quarter finals.  We went to the North Greenwich Arena, also known as the 02 (I didn't know they were the same, that's a phone company around here for my American friends, they sponsor it).  It's also known as the Millennium Dome, built for the millennium celebrations here, though from what I gather it wasn't as popular as other things, like the London Eye, built for the millennium.  We had dinner at T.G.I. Fridays (I know, I know, but you kind of miss that stuff when you are in another country......) and then saw the Brazil/Argentina game.  Major snoozefest.  The only thing that made it interesting was the row of Argentina fans sitting in front of us (they are all the raised hands you see in the front in the first photo).  They were singing songs, chanting, waving their flags and shirts around their head like a helicopter......  We were a little bummed because we thought we only had tickets to that game and that the US/Australia match was at a different park, but lo, as we started walking down from our nosebleed seats, they announced the next teams, score!  We sat in seats vacated by the victorious Argentinians and had much better seats for what turned out to be a much better match. 

We won gold eventually.  For those who didn't follow it.  Not that it's a surprise, they are AMAZING!!!!  I have a new love for basketball, and it was Chris's first live sporting event and he loved it.  That's the great thing about being with someone who never did anything or went anywhere as a kid, you get to do it all for the first time with him!  Next week it's his first trip to Paris........sigh.

All in all a great night, the traffic wasn't bad at all, the tubes weren't crowded, and we had free day passes with the tickets to boot!  I was ambivalent towards the games when they started but I have to say, I was really sad to watch the closing ceremonies.  What a once in a lifetime experience.