mrandmrsr: Wimbledon

We were very excited that we were able to go down to Wimbledon yesterday! T got off of work early, quickly came home, changed, and we were out the door. It was a surprisingly beautiful day! Upon arriving, we basically had it in our minds that we were not going to get tickets, but we were going out on a whim. When we arrived to the Wimbledon area, there was a sign that said 'Queue for Non-ticket holders.' We entered the line. They gave us a 'queue ticket' and we were numbers 10100 and 10101. The person in charge of the line said that it would maybe take 2 hours - 2 and a half hours to get to the front of the line. We nodded, and decided to brave the treacherous line. It was 2:30pm. It started to drizzle... we did not have any umbrellas, and since it was pretty hot before we left, we were wearing shorts and a skirt. Hmm... should we stay in the line?

The drizzle soon went away, and people began handing out refreshments. We talked to a few people in line, and tried to figure out how to pass the time. Rumor was that we would probably get in by 5:30pm. Oh gosh... 3 hours to go! This was going to be a LONG day! We had coffee, orange squash (some wierd drink), and played a few games on our little British phones. The line was moving quite well, and we were gaining hope that maybe it would not take as long as we thought! Well, we were right! We were at the admission gate by 3:30. Only having to wait in line for around an hour, we were ecstatic! We bought our tickets, only 20 pounds, and headed straight to the board to see who was playing. General admission is allowed to view anyone playing tennis on courts 3-20. However, if you want to see matches on Centre court, No. 1 or No. 2, you have to stand in a queue and pay 5-10 pounds to get a ticket. When we got there, Nadal was playing on Centre Court, there was no way we were getting into that one. After that, Andy Murray, a British favorite, was on Centre Court, we definitely were not getting into that one either. We saw that Andy Roddick was playing on No. 1 later in the day, so we decided that we would walk around, watch some random tennis matches, eat Strawberries and Cream (a Wimbledon favorite), and then queue up to try to get tickets to see Roddick play. Tennis is a sport that I enjoy watching, so even though we did not know all of the people playing that we watched, it was a lot of fun!

After a few hours of wandering around, we got in the queue to get tickets to Court No. 1, and within 10 minutes, we had our new tickets in hand, grabbed some food and a Pimm's (another British favorite Liquor drink), and then headed inside to support our fellow American! We watched the first set, Roddick, ranking at 30, and his opponent, Jamie Baker, ranking at 187. Roddick barely won in a tie breaker making the first set 7-6. The clouds quickly came out, and I started to freeze. I went to get some hot tea, and T got a beer. We went back to our seats, watched them play until the score was Roddick 4-2, and then it started to rain. Unfortunately, it was rained out and they would have to finish the following day. We waited for the rain to die down, looked around the gift store, and headed out of the stadium, back down the road, on the tube, and back to our humble abode. We had a great time! My dad loves to play tennis, and the whole time, I kept thinking that he would have LOVED this event! He should definitely try to visit the event one day! Here are some pictures of our time at Wimbledon!