Wimbledon
No other title needed.
Never before have I had a serious desire to watch or play tennis. Turns out, I have been missing out.
I am a morning person but the idea of boarding a bus at 4:30 am on a Friday that I didn't have to work wasn't exactly my favorite thing. But the intrigue of the famous Wimbledon Championships made it a little easier to roll out of bed and get ready to go.
After a questionable trip to the ATM down the street we waited outside our flat to board a coach bus and head to the grounds. We got there before the bus and tube were running in order to get a head start on the days crowd.
Seeing as it was 5:30 am and all, the adrenaline from excitement was pretty much the only thing keeping us from falling asleep on the grass in our spot in line. We all bought newspapers that came with a bag, a blanket and chocolate or sunglasses (be shocked, I chose chocolate). Seems a little strange to me but I wasn't complaining - it was cold!
After a few hours of milling around and talking our line started to move. The "Honorary Stewards" led us to another part of the line in the strangest way I could possibly imagine, but hey, Brits know how to queue so I wasn't going to argue. We then slowly moved forward in a standing portion of the line and made our way through the golf course taken over by Wimbledon decoration and stands.
Going through security was funny; they thought I had a knife in my bag. Seriously, I was asked multiple times where my knife was. After the man took out the entire contents of my bag, asked me again where the knife he saw on the X-ray system was, he was convinced I was ok and moved me along. I get that this is totally necessary and appreciate concern for safety but this was just funny.
At this point we were all starving. You're thinking, simple solution, right? Its a sporting event, surely there are concessions open. Wrong. It's 9:30 am.
We made our way to a large cluster of people waiting to be let into the park area and awaited the 10:30 opening gate time. It was a mad dash but we made it to Court 3, the "best" court that we were able to access with our grounds admission tickets. With a grounds ticket, sitting is based on the queue; if you leave, your seat goes to the next person in line and you have to get back in line to get back to the court - no exceptions.
Thankfully, we were granted a 20 minute grace period after we first sat down. My first order of business: food. I found a pasty and downed it, making it back to my seat with a couple minutes to spare. The rain dampened the mood a little and ended up delaying play for about 45 minutes.
I watched Caroline Wozniacki defeat Ana Konjuh in the third round of ladies' singles, followed by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeat Jimmy Wang. Both were great matches and exciting to watch.
We then made our way to The Hill, affectionately called "Murray Mound", to watch the large screen that projected the centre court matches. In what I would think was an extremely long (and tiring) match, Serena Williams lost to Petra Kvitova. Then we watched Andy Murray take Roberto Bautista Agut in three sets.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Josh and I got up to go get food and I was greeted by the sound of my name. I looked up and Ryan Taylor, a friend from high school, walking toward me. Turns out he is living here for the summer as well and happened to be enjoying some tennis on the same day as me. Crazy.
We watched from opening the gates (and wayyyy before) to the last match of the day. Finally, after an extremely long walk and tube ride, I made it home and collapsed in the middle of the living room floor.
Things I learned:
- The rules of tennis and how to keep score (CPS PE failed me on this one...or I wasn't paying attention enough to retain it).
- When they say British people like lines (or "queues" as they call them), they aren't kidding. And they know how to make lines...this may be one of those things that makes more sense in the context of the situation but if you had seen how we were lined up at Wimbledon, you would understand.
- After sitting at Wimbledon for 14 hours and being awake/away from home for 21, I become rather delirious.
- The world is small.