Laura's Lovely Log

wimbledon pics

well, I know you're probably expecting to hear about the bombings, but I got the chance to blog from home and need to put up all the pics from Wimbledon and the 4th of July. Maybe I'll talk about all that other stuff later.

So, we left the office, took the train to Wimbledon, and then got on a shuttle bus to the courts. The view from the top of the bus:

After we got there, we had to walk and walk and walk until we finally found the end of the queue (American: line). It was so long, they actually handed out a guide to queueing. I couldn't believe it. It's the most English thing I've ever seen. I kept it. Anyways, I kept trying to get pictures of the line, but they don't really show the scale. I won't bore you with them all, so here's just one:

After we finally got there, we pretty much went to the first court to sit down and finally get to watch some tennis. That happened to be court 16 where we watched 2 Americans (Justin Gimelstob & Brian Macphie) play against 2 Czechs (Suk & Vizner). I rooted for the Americans, but they lost:

Next, we were off to Henman Hill to watch Henman play. It was fabulous sitting amongst a bunch of Brits and rooting Henman on, despite the fact that he lost to Tursunov:

In this one, you can also see the water feature, which is very pretty:

And this is the crowd leaving the hill after Henman lost:

We took a break to grab some burgers and beers (Pimms was WAY too expensive) and then headed back to the hill to sit down and eat. But this time we were sitting on the bottom instead of the top:

From there, we also got to watch the upcoming-Brit, Andy Murray, beat Stepanek. This made the crowd very happy:

After that, we got up to look around. We had just wheadled our way onto Court 1, when Suz's boyfriend called. He had a special pass because he was being wined and dined by a design team. Anyways, he snuck us into the private bar they'd been hanging out in. So, we sat with them for a while and enjoyed the air-conditioning and Pimms. After that, we borrowed their passes and snuck on to Court 1. Some ladies (Lisa Raymond & Rennae Stubbs vs. Cohen-Aloro & Sfar) who were slated to play on the lower courts got bumped up. That's why the stands are so empty:

Well, that and it was the end of the day and everyone who was still there was at the Roddick match. And, yes, we snuck in. It was awesome! Andy Roddick, centre court. This was the battle against Bracciali that Andy eventually won. I took a couple pics, but this one's the best. That's Andy on the left with the white cap:

Well, that's pretty much it. I've been at this for a while now (it takes time to put in all those links). I'm not sure I'll get the NY pics up tonight. We'll see. One last thing, I'm experimenting with this new layout to see if it keeps the template from getting messed up. Because of that, the pictures are smaller. Let me know if you'd like me to send you bigger versions or if you hate the layout (or even if you love it).

posted by Laura @ 10:21 PM