Our Iceland-UK-Olympics Vacation PART I

The 2012 London Olympic Games

I know I said I was going to tell you about our recent Iceland-UK vacation in one post, but I'm sitting here watching the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony on TV right now and am feeling inspired to at least tell you about the Olympic games part of our trip!

Many years ago we decided that we wanted to visit England one day. Then when London was announced as the host to the 2012 Summer Olympics, we decided that's when we should go. So this vacation has been part of our plans for a long time. Over a year ago, we bid on tickets to several Olympic events and ended up with tickets only to women's court volleyball. Our entire trip was then planned around these tickets for Olympic volleyball on August 2, 2012.

We left the USA for Iceland on July 26, 2012, visited Reykjavik for a day, arrived in London late July 27, 2012, took a train to Scotland for several days, returned back to London where we spent the rest of our trip, save for one day when we left the city for a whirlwind tour of Bath, England, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. I'll tell you all about the rest of our trip in another post. For now, here are some photos from the Olympic games we attended.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 31, 2012 we met a family from Canada who had extra tickets for women's football [soccer] that night so my husband and eldest daughter were very lucky to be able to go to that game. They saw Great Britain vs. Brazil! So fantastic to see these two teams play each other. Let me tell you that any Olympic game is just AWESOME to see in person. But when the host team is playing? The crowds go WILD! It's like nothing else. You can imagine what it's like to be there in person when you're watching the games on TV and you see and hear the spectators cheering, but when you're there it's SO much louder, more thrilling and you cannot help but feel so lucky and so happy to be a part of something so spectacular. Great Britain won that game, by the way. GBR vs BRA 1-0.

Earl's Court Venue for Court Volleyball
2012 Summer Olympics, London

Two days later, on the afternoon of August 2, 2012 we headed to Earl's Court for women's court volleyball. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you probably saw most of these photos already. We had only picked up our tickets that morning in London, but when we got to the stadium we noticed that our seats were split up! Not good. I guess this happens often enough because we were directed to the ticket reconciliation counter to see if we could switch our seats. I was worried that we'd get worse seats, but no! They were even better! We were in the FIRST ROW! Yay! How's that for luck?

We saw two matches that afternoon. First was Turkey vs. Serbia, in which Turkey won in three sets. SRB vs TUR 0-3 and then Great Britain vs. Italy in which Italy won in three sets GBR vs ITA 0-3. We had a fantastic time. We were all smiles and kept on the edge of our seats watching these fantastic athletes compete against each other. Here are some photos from women's Olympic court volleyball:

Women's Volleyball
TUR vs SRB 3-0
2012 Summer Olympics, London 

Team GB Women's Volleyball
GBR vs. ITA 0-3
2012 Summer Olympics, London

The court sweepers for women's volleyball.
2012 Summer Olympics, London

Whenever we were in our hotel room we had the BBC coverage of the Olympics on the television. On Saturday morning, August 4, 2012 we caught the women's triathlon on television and I remembered that I made a note to myself WEEKS ago that I wanted to try to see some of this event! You know, since I became a triathlete myself last year and all. ;) So I did some super quick research on the triathlon course and where would be the best place for spectators without tickets to go for viewing this event. We booked out of our hotel, hopped on the Tube and raced over to Hyde Park where we were able to catch the last few laps of the running component of the triathlon. Even though it was really crowded and we had a limited view of the course, it was still SO thrilling or me to be able to catch part of this event in person. I was quite happy. Here are a few shots of the athletes in women's triathlon:

Women's Triathlon
2012 Summer Olympics
Hyde Park, London

Women's Triathlon
2012 Summer Olympics
Hyde Park, London

And that my friends, is how we were spectators in the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Truly an experience of a lifetime. And if I could do it again, I would. In a heartbeat.

A view of Beach Volleyball
as seen from the top of The London Eye

Now I want to go to Sochi in 2014. :)