Some little trips

So, Monday morning and we didn't have to go to work...! Yay! Even better, we were going to get to watch some tennis :) The plan was to go and find some breakfast before heading to the O2 so we took the boat from the hotel to canary wharf. We walked along and headed into a shopping centre where we found somewhere to get breakfast. The afterwards we set about trying to find the tube station :) One quick stop on the jubilee line and we were at the O2. It was much busier than last night but we had some time and so we had a look around at the various stalls (for want of a better word). We 'won' some tennis balls in a game of air hockey at the Barclays stall and got a free bag from Nissan after registering our details via a very complicated process ;) We saw Ross practicing with Louis whilst we were wandering around. We eventually decided to head into the arena to wait for the start of the doubles. Grabbed a quick drink on the way in and then took our seats. Some ...

Back in September after Andy won the US Open I decided that I had better get a move on and decide if we were going to see some tennis at the O2 this year. A quick twitter conversation followed and Jennifer and I decided that we would go....and Rob reluctantly decided to accompany us. There was no way of knowing who would be playing in which session and so we decided to go for the first session on the Monday....hoping that they would start off with the Olympic and US Open Champion....! We decided to make a weekend of it and I thought it might be nice to see the Blackpool Illuminations. So, Rob and I headed up to Sheffield on the Friday afternoon - this took us a little longer than planned as it was the end of the half term break and so the roads were quite busy :( We stayed overnight at a Premier Inn and then picked up Jennifer in the morning to head across to Blackpool. The journey to Blackpool was uneventful and we arrived at our hotel around lunchtime. The hotel only ha...

After having such a good time at the Olympics tennis and football events I tried (and failed) to get tickets to some of the athletics sessions. I later decided to try for tickets for the Paralympics and managed to get 3 tickets for the morning session on the 7th September. I then had to beg for the day off work as 2 of my team already had the time booked off....but I managed to convince my boss that she should let me go :) So, the dog went off to the kennels and we got up at 5am Friday morning :( Rob's mum arrived and we walked to the station to catch our 6.12 train to London. The train journey went smoothly and we arrived at Waterloo on time. Headed to the Jubilee line which was understandably busy, got on the 2nd train and got seats once we stopped at Canary Wharf and the train emptied out a bit. We got to Stratford and we followed the huge pink signs to the Olympic Park. Security was quick and easy....still don't understand why the football was different as it seemed...

So, visit to the tennis done...now onto the football. I decided to take my uncle to the football with me as Rob doesn't like football (and in the end wouldn't have been able to go anyway!) We set off from Westbury train station at 1410 and happily I had got seats reserved when I booked the tickets. By the time the train had reached Bath Spa it was full and the number of people who got on at Bristol was amazing...! I wish I had taken a picture because the train was so full that we left people on the platform at Filton cos there just wasn't any more space on the train! The train was really hot and it was a relief to get off at Cardiff. Thankfully they were handing out bottles of water at the station....which was quickly drunk before we even reached the stadium. Typically our tickets were for gate 1 which was the furthest away! Took about 20 mins to get there and then we had the ridiculous security to deal with...! All belongings had to be entered into a plastic ba...