Pimms, Strawberries...oh and Tennis

No one in their right mind gets up at 4 o'clock in the morning to line up for 4 hours.....you do if you want to go to Wimbledon though, otherwise referred to as SW17.

Mark and I decided to go early in the tournament to maximise potential grand slam player viewing. So we trudged across London in the wee hours, mind you it was light when we jumped on the bus at 4.45am, to join a queue of centre court ticket hopefuls.

It turned out we were 510 and 511 in the queue and about 50 people away from getting centre court tickets...bummer should have gotten up the first time the alarm went off. Nethertheless we actually had a choice of court 1 or court 2 tickets.

Once we made it inside the gates of the gorgeous All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club with lots of pretty purple and white flowers (petunias and hyacinths) everywhere, there was more waiting till the courts opened at 10:30am (games start at noon). It was a mad dash for seat with all the Australians at the Wayne Arthurs game - though he still lost. The most exciting bit was watching them set up the court for the match, which is so organised and proper - very hard to explain. The new umpire uniforms are very posh.

We went to our court 1 seats just in time for the 1pm start of the Tim Henman game. We had great seats right behind the umpire chair with a great view of the court. The game, well the first set, was very boring (nearly nodded off too) and we only stayed for that set, before we continued watching the game on Henman Hill with our picnic lunch (and Pimms).

We went for a wander around to check out the grounds; watched a set of the Poo on court 2 (from where we could just see Alicia Molik playing her game); had some strawberries and cream before going over to centre court, where the security guards were kind enough to let us in to have a peek at the end change - so we got to see Andre Agassi!!!

At the end of the day before trooping back to London laden with our souvenir tennis towel and match balls, we watched the lovely Kimmy Clijsters kick butt back on court 1. It's such a long day but it was worth it, but for next year we might give it a try getting tickets in the ballot!!!

Oh, another thing........some people get paid to have sponsorship material in their front yards, one house was sponsored by Yonex and another one Nike! How weird is that, I suppose its compensation for having 7,000 people park themselves outside your house for 2 weeks a year.

(ps pictures to come, promise)

Summer days...

I hate to rub it in, but we are still having great weather (I am sure you'll all rub it in when its your summer versus our winter later). Flip flops are my new best friends, along with my wedges....I could go on about my way too many shoe purchases, but I won't. LOL

Saturday morning we had a good sleep in, as we headed out to a club on Friday night (BarRhumba near Piccadilly Circus - all drum&bass/hip hop, certainly not recommended being a rock girl myself) and that coupled with the night before made for the necessary extra sleep. Thus our first excursion for the day was alas not prior to noon!!

Mark wanted to visit the Spitalfields Markets near Liverpool Street as its supposed to be quite a cool place to go, with a good mix of food, clothes, antiques and trendy jewellery - not unlike Camden markets really. However we discovered that there were only a few places open as they are re-doing the roof. The Spitalfields church nearby is beautiful, very different from the standard London churches. So we just had a bit of a wander around and ended up finding some cool clothes places just off Brick Lane. Which was perfect as Mark was looking for a shirt to go out with that night!!

Oh and we did have a breakfast slash very late afternoon brunch at a cool little place called Sausage & Mash, where they do you guessed it great sausages and mash!!!

Our evening out was a 3Oth plus birthday party in Covent garden. A cool roof top hotel bar - Courthouse Kupinksi (something like that) - where the proper bar has 3 old prison cells converted into club booths. We met a few nice people and had a brilliant time. We did however have to turn into pumpkins and leave before the last trains at 12:30. But all in all a great night!!!

Australia kicks Croatian butt....

Well it was a draw, but had they had another 30 seconds goal number 3 would have eventuated for the Aussies. It was an amazing game and so much more the fun to watch because they were playing so well.

I was invited by one of my recruitment companies to attend a private party at the Walkabout near Temple, but hey I got a better offer. Mark originally planned to watch the game at home, but for some bizarre reason the Beeb and ITV television stations were not showing it live....ah thus a quick 40 minute dash across London saw him at Vibe just in time for the first Aussie goal!!

Thus Mark and I watched the game at a place called Vibe, which is a largish bar/beer garden with a huge indoor big screen room - it was not unlike a German beer hall really. Vibe is in Brick Lane (East London) and I was invited by my friend Meredith, to hang out with her and her Australian (and English) mates. One of her friends is Croatian and she was decked out in all her Croatian gear. She sure let all the Australians (only about 99% of the crowd) know about it when Croatia scored. She is a good sort though and now is going for Australia!!!

The game itself was quite intense, lots of nail biting, hair pulling, "ahhh" screaming moments, but despite the odd dirty trick and red card, justice prevailed. Australia did what they had to do and there was much rejoicing, screaming and hugging when time was up!! Thus as Matt would say "Guus your Daddy".

To celebrate we headed to, or rather were lured to, one of the innumerable Indian restaurants off Brick Lane. The food was great, but alas not nice the next day as MSG is still used in the UK. We had a fantastic night and caught the last tubes home ready to get up early to go to work the next day (ugh).

Australia vs Brazil

We made this world cup game coincide with our first visit to a Walkabout pub in London. We thought it would make for a more interesting, or rather more pleasant visit. It however was awful, soooo feral - but we had been warned (thanks Simone).

There were plenty of Australians (of course) with much green and gold, Australian music (that seems is all the walkabouts play) and Aussie flags; so it had the potential to be a lively patriotic event. But....there were lots of people who were way too drunk by the time the game started to even actually pay attention to it.

Though I must say being there gave me a good opportunity to sing Advance Australia fare out loud, with my off key singing blending in with the slurs of the rest of the singing crowd. However, I am sure Mark would have had to listen to me singing even if we were in our living room watching it!!!!

It overall was a good game to watch, and I did watch, with the second half being very much a thriller - just a shame we didn't win in the end!! Nevertheless GO THE SOCCEROOS.......................

Summery Sunday out...

Today we indended on making our way to the Regents Park Tastes of London, however we soon discovered that like all things, it seems, in London - you need to book ahead. Ahh... so it was sold out. Nevermind we had a nice wander through the park, which was just bustling with picnic makers, family footballers and sun worshipers; apt given the gorgeous 29 degree sunshine that we were having.

We headed to Marylebone High street for a pub lunch and we were fortunate enough to come upon the "Marlyebone High Street summer fayre" in full swing. Once again London is full of suprises! There were kiddies rides, including a full sized Merry-go-round, lots of food stalls (the farmers market moved to the high street which was closed for the "fayre"), along with Ceroc dancing, and street performers. Being a bit parched we stopped in at the "Marylebone Tup" pub for some cider (Mark) and Pimms (me) - gotta love Pimms for a summery drink - before making our way to Dusk for brunch/lunch. So quite a nice afternoon out really....

Oh I promise to put pictures in, but with my photo lab having shut up shop (he seems to have gone bust - though damn it he was good) I will have to hunt down another one.

Queens Birthday & brushes with fame

Ok so there you have it up to Turkey. There is a bit, well lots actually, in between and i promise to go back and fill in all the gaps.

Today it was a lovely warm day and Mark and I had decided to got to the Queen's Birthday parade, otherwise known as the Trooping of the Colours. Odd name, but basically lots of soldiers and horses in their fancy uniforms. Oh and the Queen and some Princesses and Princes. Yes we were just metres away from the Queen when she came past us along the Mall in her Royal carriage (actually the very one once used by Queen Victoria). I was so excited I didn't even get a picture. Doh. But Mark had helped me onto the fence earlier (not very glamorous to do in a dress!) and I did get photos of the Princesses in their carriage.

Following that we headed to Buckingham Palace, along with the parade, and we got to see Queenie with her family on the balcony - so i have pictures of that. There was also fly pasts of various different planes, including the famous Red Arrows, which flew over with red, white and blue jet streams.

Our brush with famous people did not end there today. As we headed through St James park after the parade, we came across Scarlett Johansson and a bloke (we had no idea who he was) just having a leisurely stroll through the park. There was no mistaking those lips - YES it really was her, am sure now that I have surfed the web to check that she actually is in London at the moment. Mark at first thought I was wrong but I made him follow her and get another look! She is quite pretty and soooo skinny, not really very tall either, but hardly curvy really.

But that was not all!! On our way home from the Borough Markets on the tube (we had lunch there -yummy venison hamburgers...mmmmm), the Mayor of London - Ken Livingstone - was on there with his (we guess) grand daughter, who is about 2 and was being very cute making a huge mess trying to eat an icecream. I had no idea of course, but Mark told me afterwards.

So that is our exciting day, our brushes with fame! Oh well I probably won't see another famous person the entire time we are here now. I think I got my quota done over in one day!

So now we are back in our flat watching the US trying to beat Italy in the World Cup.....but its 9:15pm and still light...so I think I might drag Mark out to go for a bit of a wander!!