My day started at the delightful hour of 3:30am, as I had organised to meet my friends for The Queue at 5am. I got onto my first bus, only to find that I had no credit and couldn't actually travel as far as I had intended. I jumped off the bus early at a tube station to recharge, except it wasn't open, so I couldn't top up. And I still had to get to Wimbledon somehow... So I downloaded and called myself an Uber, getting there just in time! Thank goodness.
I met my friends and we joined the queue. I was the first in the group to get a ticket, and I got number 2745... at 5am. Wow. The time actually passed really quickly, what with chatting and playing cards and snacking and complaining about how long we'd been up already (so many British people drinking at around 7am). We started to move around 9, I think, and by about 10:30 we were through security and buying tickets. When we got to the front of the queue, we were all set to buy our general admission tickets (a very reasonable 25 pounds!), until we heard that there was a single centre court ticket still available. We persuaded Jess and Matt to buy it, so that they could share it and get the full centre court Wimbledon experience. The rest of us bought our general admission tickets, and we were finally in!
We headed straight to Court 16, for the mens doubles, featuring Aussies Kokkinakis and Thompson. It was really cool to watch Aussies play here in London, although unfortunately they didn't win. Jess and Matt are the best people, and they let a few of us take turns to go into centre court to watch the game there! So I got to spend about half an hour watching Azarenka play against Brit Heather Watson, who was excellent, but Azarenka won in the end.
After giving someone else a turn on centre court, we headed to the gift shop for souvenirs! I got a few things for me (a cute mug with the Championship logo and strawberries on, and a fan which was super practical), and a few things as gifts. Not even super expensive. I even got a program, which I can fill in with the other results as they come in! Then we grabbed some food and headed to the lawn to watch the end of Azarenka/Watson on the big screen.
By this time, most of my friends had headed off, so the few of us remaining wandered the courts to see what we could find. And what we could find, was another pair of Aussies playing doubles! This time, it was Barty and Dellacqua playing ladies doubles. It was an incredible match. They lost the first set, won the second, and the third? It was game for game, practically. There were trick shots, there was surprises, and we were gasping and cheering. There was even three first serve lets in a row, which left all the players smiling at the chances. In the end, the Aussies came from 2-5 down, to 5-5, to finally win the final set 10 games to 8! We were cheering so so loudly, so proud of our Aussie girls.
By this time, I was left on my own with my remaining friends in centre court, so I grabbed a snack (strawberries and cream popcorn, yum!) and sat to watch the final centre court match on the big screen, which featured Andy Murray. But it was 7:30pm already, and it looked like a long game (turns out that was the beginning of set 2 of 4), so I caught a bus/train home, picking up dinner on the way.
A long day (from 3:30am to, well, I'm still up...), but an incredibly satisfying one. Wimbledon crossed of the bucket list - although I will return next year! Just, I need to catch up on my sleep first...
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