In case you missed it, we were lucky enough to have a little ol’
event called The Olympics descend on London throughout July and August.
If we’re totally honest, we initially weren’t all that enthused
about it. Like many locals, we got caught up in the pervading idea that London
was going to come to a grinding halt under the strain of over a million
visitors descending on the city each day. This message was constantly
reinforced via a massive communications campaign that hit just about every
advertising space in London, and proclaimed over the PA systems in every tube
station in the lead up. The message was simple – stay away. You would have been
forgiven for thinking that London was preparing for Armageddon, not a mere
sporting event.
While there was a definite air of excitement and anticipation in the
lead up, this was very much tempered by not quite knowing how we were all going
to cope. There was talk of having to wait two hours to catch a train, and
needing to work from home for the entire six weeks that the Olympics were in
town.
Well, having now made it through without being trampled to death by
hoards of marauding tourists, we can safely say that the reality did not get
anywhere near the hype.
So much so in fact that central London was more akin to a ghost
town. We half expected to see some tumbleweed blowing down Oxford Street. It
wasn’t long before the ‘stay away’ campaign was drowned out by furious local
shopkeepers who were up in arms about the lack of business that they were
doing.
For us personally, we soon got over our pretentious lack of
excitement and were very much regretting not having tickets. We fortunately
managed to sneak in just in time and pick up some tickets for the Paralympic Athletics. It proved to be a brilliant decision.
We got to go out to Olympic Park, which was really quite amazing.
The atmosphere was incredible, and to their credit, really well organized! We
were lucky to go on a night when Team GB won a gold medal, which was worth it
just to hear the absolute eruption in the stadium.
Overall, it was an incredible time to be in London, and we really do
count ourselves exceptionally lucky to have experienced it.
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