Flashback Friday Travel 35 – London 2012

The summer of 2012 is one that I look back on incredibly fondly.  Never has it been so much fun to be in the UK and even fun to be in London for work.  The country and the city had this buzz to it that I wish it had all the time and even better, the weather played ball for the best part of 6 weeks too! Sat on the underground people smiled at each other and there was mass swapping of sponsor badges with complete strangers!  I will let you in to a secret – we got so hooked on the Olympics and Paralympics that we still watch the highlights DVDs on a dull day!  It isn’t quite the same, but still!  During the Olympics it was acceptable to take iPads to work specifically to have them playing sport on our desks, no one raised an eyebrow!  And it was equally normal to dash home to watch horses dancing to music, I think they were the stand out surprise of the event – everyone loved the dancing horses, even the cool kids!  And then we kept winning medals too.  Yorkshire to be fair did most of the medal winning for Team GB but even so – the medals kept on coming.  Everyone was smiling!

Initially we hadn’t planned to go to much at all, perhaps we were sceptical… But then I won some tickets at work.  Work was heavily involved with the event and interestingly this is actually where my blogging started.  In our firm an individual was asked to blog about every single sport in the run up and then through the games.  I got sailing (naturally) and had a lovely time writing about different aspects of the sport as well as updating on Team GB’s progress.  This got me tickets to the volleyball – known as the ‘hottest tickets in town’ for obvious reasons.  A grand day out in the sunshine on Horseguards parade.

We had of course purchased some tickets to the sailing in Weymouth – with hindsight I only wish we’d got more, it was so much fun – I would happily have spent a week sat on the grass at the Nothe Fort watching the sailing, catching up with friends and enjoying a glass or two of pimms.  The sailing was tight and close enough to the shore to really be able to see what was going on.  Another grand day out!

We had cannily managed to sneak in a mini-break on the south of France between the Olympics and Paralympics – and the 2012 fever didn’t even stop for this.  Sat in the BA lounge waiting for our flight, team GB kept winning medals which meant that we kept winning airmiles… what a great idea BA!  And then we went to the plane and we had the torch plane – c’est parfait!

Refreshed from a few days of no sport, we were back invigorated and ready for another 10 days of TV watching sport, never had a nation spent so much time on its sofas!  The paralympics was inspiring and Channel 4’s coverage was really good, sometimes a bit out of left-field, but good.  The work treats continued as a result of the blogging.  This time we were invited to the ‘house’ on Olympic Avenue for ‘a’ drink to collect tickets to the paralympic closing ceremony.  Well – ‘a’ drink was actually an afternoon of fine food and champagne in the sunshine with a stunning view of the stadium! We were very well looked after indeed.

The closing ceremony itself was fantastic – thankfully we are both Coldplay fans!  The pictures say it best – a festival of music, lights and fireworks.  A real treat to be there.  We didn’t get to see much of the olympic park – we had planned to before the ceremony, however ‘a’ drink spiraled and we ended up making a mad dash to our seats just in time for the start!

The games were extraordinary and London came alive to it.  I’m so glad that we had the chance to attend as much as we did – it was wonderful to be part of it and I think everyone British has never been prouder of the show the country put on.  Now… can we bid for another games soon?