Wimbledon

So I'm going to go out of chronological order and skip ahead to my day at Wimbledon - Finland weekend will come later.  :)  I went to Wimbledon with my friend Lizzie.  First time for both of us and many people here had said it was an event not to be missed.  There are so many unique things about going to Wimbledon!

First, THE QUEUE.  All important - fancy word for "line."  Unlike most major sporting events, they don't sell all the tickets to Wimbledon in advance.  There are a set number of tickets every day that are reserved for the Queue. They are some of the best seats in the three largest courts (aka "show courts") and are available every day, all the way up to the finals.  They have a large field set up where you can camp out, vendors selling food and drinks.  The entire thing is so organized and so...British.

Lizzie and I didn't want to camp out, so we took the train out early and joined the Queue around 7:30am.  Here is the camping area.

You should know that most of the people in the tents in this picture were actually queuing for tickets for the FOLLOWING day to see Andy Murray play.  So they were there more than 24 hours in advance to get a spot in line!

They only have about 500 tickets for each of the three big courts and when you get in line, you get a card with a number on it.  Our number was in the 1800s, so we thought we would only get grounds passes.  We were surprised when the agent came through passing out wrist bands for seats in Court 1!  (That's the second best court at Wimbledon.)  So we got them!!  This is us showing off our wristbands that we got Court 1!

Inside of Court 1, early in the day before any play began.

 This is later in the day.  It rained off and on through the afternoon.  Because the courts are grass, they cover them up when it rains so they don't get slippery and waterlogged.  This cover was on alot that day!

While it was raining, we wandered around the grounds.  This is the formal entrance to the All England Lawn & Tennis Club. The guys at the door smiled nicely for pictures. :)

We had the required Strawberries & Cream!  Special note - mine was FREE!!!  HSBC Bank was one of the event sponsors and any HSBC customer could show their bank card and get theirs free.  This never happens to me - I've never been at an event and banked with the right place before!

This is the view from our seats!  Early in the day we saw two women's quarter-finals matches.  Incidentally, we got to see Marion Bartoli, who went on to win the entire Championship!  That was pretty cool for us.  Also a fun moment was after the official matches, they had some exhibition matches scheduled on the large courts.  Ours was a senior doubles match...can the tennis fans see who that is on the court?

Here is a closer shot and the scoreboard with the names on it too - that's John McEnroe!!  Super funny little match they played and everyone seemed to love it.  

The grounds were really beautiful - this is some of the seating between courts and flower baskets everywhere!

And here is Henman Hill!  This was taken later in the evening as we were leaving.  But during the day the hill was full of people having picnics and watching on the big screen.

Really fun day altogether and so glad we were able to go!!