Cultural Experiences Repeated; A Day at Wimbledon!

I adore Wimbledon. I have been to the tennis multiple times (this year is my fourth year but fifth visit in total!) and I had attempted to get tickets for the 2020 Wimbledon. Of course that did not end up happening, even though in the end I did get tickets in the Ballot (for a weekday, which I had to give up anyway because work!) so I had assumed that for 2021 I wouldn't get to go, even if it was on!

For tickets this year it was all online, and I did try (on 3 tabs simultaneously!) to get tickets but I totally missed out. The online queues were really long... So I assumed that I wouldn't get anything at all - until I had a tip from someone at work. There were actually tickets going up on sale the day before for different courts! So I quickly messaged to make sure that I had a friend to go with (of course I did!) and starting on Thursday night, right after I heard about this, I checked every 5 minutes. You had to be quick enough to get the seats in the basket, which I wasn't for the first few ones, but then around 10pm on Thursday night, I got some!

Next it was about getting ready. Wimbledon is part of Part 3 of the pilot scheme, so all we had to do was make sure we take a lateral flow test within 48 hours of entry. Of course, I'm testing twice a week for work anyway so it was just a matter of timing it so that I did one on Friday morning.

On the day, we packed all our stuff - sunscreen, hats, umbrella, raincoat, water, tickets on our phone, email of the Covid test results... and Linda and I met at Wimbledon station around 10:30am. We caught the train to Wimbledon Park and walked through the big park to the courts! Test results checked, tickets checked, security checked... And we were in! We decided to start with a lap of the area, and as we were doing so, it started to rain! So we watched (as by now it was after 11 and outside courts play had started) as the ball kids pulled the court covers up and play was suspended, before continuing our wander, this time with umbrellas up. We headed over to the shop and picked up some souvenir bits (towel, notebook, keychain and programme for me!), then decided to start our eating with strawberries and cream! By the time we had finished eating those it had stopped raining, but we then decided it was lunch time. We had our lunch, got some tinned gin and tonics, and extra snacks, bathroomed up, then headed to our seats!

We were in block 302 - which sounds quite far away but was actually closer than expected! We were behind and to the right of the royal box and had a really good view of the action without needing to do the head turning thing. Up first was Coco Gauff. I couldn't believe she's only 17! She won in straight sets with some really great points.

We were really excited though for the other 2 matches - next up was Roger Federer, and he was playing a Brit - Cameron Norrie. It was a really tense match (much closer than the score let on!) and Norrie did a great job. The combination of Fed and a Brit made for a very intense crowd - lots of oohing and aahing and really tense cheering!!! Luckily Fed came through in the end and won. That match ended around 6pm and at that point most people went home, I think partly because of the football match that started in just a few hours.

But next up with the womens world number one - and she's an Aussie - Ash Barty! Her opponent was not a very good sport, she actually got a warning from the umpire for banging her raquet! She also was very visibly getting annoyed at herself as she started losing and that didn't help her. It also doesn't help that Ash is phenomenal with great placement and really great use of her slice backhand - plus a serve which is almost as fast as the men! She also came through and won, hurray!

Play on Centre Court finished around 8pm and there were only matches on the other ticketed courts still going. We headed for one last lap and wander, and ended up leaving around 8:30. We decided to walked directly home, only stopping at the fish and chip shop on the way to pick up some dinner! The most phenomenal day at the tennis with great company and amazing play.

Cultural Experiences: Wimbledon 2019 Day 6

Another year, another trip to Wimbledon for the tennis! It was just Jess and I this year, and we got to the queue around 5:15 to receive what I realised looking back was the worst queue number yet... Oh dear. But it seemed fine at the time. We napped our way through the morning and I spent about an hour total queueing for the bathrooms (kind of mental), and then about 10:30 we really started to move! On the way in I picked up my programme and got a free Wimbledon radio for having an Amex card. We then got in with our Grounds tickets (about 11:15), and headed straight to Court 17 to catch Sam Querrey playing John Millman, an Australian. We queued up for a while with some other Aussies (there were a lot and I talked to a few of them!) for a while, before getting in in time for the third set. It was nice to cheer on an Aussie, but unfortunately that was the final set as he lost shortly afterwards.

By that time it was just after 1pm, so we picked up some lunch and found ourselves a spot on the Hill to watch Ashleigh Barty play on the big screen (she was on Centre Court). I had a delicious sausage roll and Hibiscus ‘drink’ which was like sweet cordial and I loved! Ash dominated against Harriet Dart (from the UK) and beat her in straight sets with some great points. She really is an excellent player and I hope she can win Wimbledon this year!

After that we weren’t super sure which court we wanted to go and see. We wandered around, bought some balls from the second hand store (did that last year as well), went to the gift shop (candles again, I love the grass scent!) and went down to the Southern Village which is where the VIP area was last year (it seems like this year that its across the road instead). Robinsons, the squash/cordial brand, had a stand with their summer special flavour which is Strawberry, Cucumber and Mint. It was so good and we each bought a bottle which came filled with it, fresh strawberries and mint and free refills!

Then we decided to head over to Court 3, where the Bryan brothers were playing in the doubles. We stayed there for most of the match because it was excellent. Towards the end our plan was to leave and head to Court 12, where Ash Barty was due to play in the doubles with Azarenka, but play was suspended in the match two before theirs. It turned out that a spectator had had a medical emergency and even a defibrillator was needed so play got suspended for several ours and they had evacuated the court and the players. So with a match and a part of another before Barty was due to play we decided we weren’t going to be able to catch that one. There was also a mixed doubles which had Andy Murray and Serena Williams playing together, but at 5:30 that still hadn’t been scheduled on a particular court, so we decided to head home. We picked up our strawberries and cream (free with HSBC!) for the walk home along with a refill of squash.

Once we got home I checked the order of play and realised we had made the right call - the Barty/Azarenka match was rescheduled onto Court 2, which had already finished for the day, and the Murray/Williams mixed doubles was put onto Centre Court. With both of those ticketed courts, we wouldn’t have seen them anyway, so instead we watched the Barty/Azarenka match on iPlayer while eating Five Guys burgers for dinner. A lovely day had by all!

Day Out: Wimbledon 2018

It's Wimbledon season! And this time around, we actually live much closer (like a 30 minute walk) to the grounds! So, after I finished work on Friday (I'm now on Summer Holidays, YEAH!!!) I headed home and tidied up the flat so that Jess could come over! She went to the Protocol boat party, then headed over but we didn't get to bed until midnight... So we got less than 4 hours of sleep before getting up at 3:45.

We left the house around 4:30 and walked to the Queue, which unfortunately means going the long way around the park but meant that we arrived around 5:15am. We got our queue cards and guides and joined the queue! We were numbers 03551, 03552, and 03553, which is better than Jess had last year on the Saturday (8th July), but worse than when I went on the 7th last year (which was a Friday). There wasn't much playing games in the queue, we were all so tired after the week (and in my case, going out on Friday to celebrate the summer holidays!), so we mostly just chatted and napped until te morning was up. We first moved about 7:30 to squish up the queue after all the tents had been packed away, then again at 9:00 when the queue started to move out of the field. By 9:30 we were moving properly and the queue moved faster than I remembered from last year. Queue highlights included free swag - strawberries from the Estee Lauder team and a free tennis ball jam doughnut from Doughnut Time and Amazon Prime (I'm sure they'd want me to tell you that the US Open is exclusively live on Prime in return for that delicious doughtnut!)

We were at the main gates and getting our tickets by 11 - we had hoped to maybe get a Centre Court seat between us, but there were only grounds tickets left by that point. That was fine, we'd sussed out the draw while in the queue and headed to Court 3 (after getting ourselves a program of course) to watch Ashleigh Barty (an Australian) play in the ladies singles. She was playing Daria Kasatkina, and was doing really well in the beginning of the first set - until towards the end of it she was broken against. Unfortunately, that was the beginning of the end for her, as she never really recovered from that break and lost 7-5 6-3.

Then we decided it was lunch time as it was almost 1pm. We picked up lunch from one of the food areas (burgers and chips for Richard and Jess, chicken teriyaki for me, with lots of cold drinks) and sat on the Murray Mound to watch Nadal playing on the big screen while we ate.

After that we decided it would be a good time to go for a wander, browse the shop and do a few other things. We started with the shop, and picked up a few souvenirs - a Gentlemen's Championship towel for Richard, a mini sports towel for us (now our hand towel in the bathroom), and the mini candle set (3 - fresh cut grass, strawberries and fizz, and english rose scented) for me. Richard also got a special plastic beer glass which he got with beer in it from the bar and brought home. Then it was just before 3pm, at which time 2 things happen - resale tickets for Centre Court and Courts 1 and 2 go on sale, and they have a sale of used championship balls (as in, the balls that go away when the call 'new balls' and make the ball changes!). So Richard stayed in the ball resale queue, and Jess and I went to the ticket resale queue. We had only just arrived though, when they said that there weren't any, and to come back at 6pm. Oh well. So we rejoined Richard and bought a can each (one for us, one for Jess) of used championship balls. They are labelled with 'Slazenger Wimbledon 2018' on them, and even had bits of authentic Wimbledon grass attached to some!!! They even come in a specially branded tin. We have decided to set aside 1 of the 3 balls to be a permanent souvenir, and the other 2 are going to be special cat toys!

Then we picked up some strawberries and cream (free to HSBC cardholders like myself and Jess), and headed to Court 6, but the queue was massive. So we went to Court 18 instead where there was another Australian lady playing. Daria Gavrilova (#26 seed) was playing against Aliaksandra Sasnovich from Belarus. It wasn't a close match (6-3, 6-1), but was still interesting to watch, especially to see someone get aggressive. Gavrilova threw her racquet, challenged a call, and even got an obscenity warning before the match was over!

That was the last match scheduled for that court, but there were extra matches on the schedule. These matches are apparently not given to any particular court, but filled in as courts are finished for the day. Richard was keen on seeing some Men's Singles, but we didn't want to move courts as we had good seats, so instead we stayed as Men's Doubles was on next! It was a fabulous match - Brits Liam Broady and Scott Clayton against Maximo Gonzalez and Nicholas Jarry (both from countries in South America). It was really good tennis - fast paced and exciting. There were a few body hits, challenged calls which were correct, and at one point the umpire overruled a linesperson. Unfortunately one of the body hits was on Liam Broady's wrist, and after taking a medical timeout and playing a few more games, they withdrew from the match, ending it early. Score was 7-6 (6-4) 6-3 1-2 when they retired, which was a shame.

By that point, it was after 6pm, and we were all shattered. None of the outside courts had any good matches left, and we didn't want to sit back on the Mound with everyone else, so we decided to head home. We were too hot to walk so we ended up catching an Uber home and getting straight into a cold shower! It was 31 and we spent most of the day sitting in the sun, so it was a very hot and sweaty day, but the strict application of sunscreen made sure that nobody got sunburnt and we all had a lovely day. You do sleep well after a day like that though! What a brilliant day - and next year, bring on Wimbledon 2019!!!

Cultural Experience: Wimbledon!

Today has been the longest, most exhilarating day. Today I ticked something major off my bucket list. Today, I went to Wimbledon.

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...