London Layover

After a 5 week work trip to the US, we stopped in London on the way back to Bratislava. It was the first weekend of Wimbledon, so we jumped at the chance to go.

WIA: Shortly after arriving and checking in at the hotel, we tubed it to the center of town by St Paul's and shared a burger at Bread Street Kitchen from their late lunch menu. I had a cold beer (I can't remember what kind) and we had an excellent chocolate tart with salt caramel ice cream and honeycomb. While walking around, we stopped at Ottolenghi, which has become one of our must stops when in London. We had a peanut butter s'more cookie thing that was super delicious.

We met my cousin, Jeff, who was in town for work, for dinner at a gastropub in Smithfield called St. John Bread and Wine. It was a quaint and cool little neighborhood. There are so many quaint and cool neighborhoods in London. The menu was a little out there, but we were able to find a few things to eat, all of which was very good. We of course ate strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, which was so so overrated. We had both reached a point of complete an utter exhaustion after the day at Wimbledon, so we had a simple dinner at Wagamama. Coincidentally, it was the same one we had eaten at 6 years on my first trip to London. It was quick and decent, which is all we need. We had a great brunch on the last day at Modern Pantry.

WID: At the National Portrait Gallery, there was an exhibit, which consisted only of pictures of Queen Elizabeth. It was in commemoration of her Diamond Jubilee. We walked through it and it was pretty amusing. We didn't have tickets to Wimbledon, but everyone (literally every single person we spoke to about going) said it wouldn't be a big deal and waiting in the queue for grounds tickets was all "part of the experience."

So, about the "experience." We arrived by tube around 6:30 in the morning and were in line by 6:45, with a bag full of some breakfast pastries, a couple of other snacks, and two bottles of water. We did not have raincoats (or even an umbrella) or a blanket. Any of these would have been helpful. We received our queue cards, which alerted us to the fact that there were 6000 people in front of us in line. We didn't know what that meant and didn't really understand if we'd get in, but over the next few hours as we watched several thousand more people line up behind us, we figured we were in okay shape. After about an hour, Jenn struck up a conversation with a nice, Czech couple in line in front of us. I knew she only started talking to them because she was eyeing their large blanket, which still had plenty of room for additional people to sit. After a while, they did ask us if we would like to sit down, which was a nice because standing was getting tiring and sitting on wet grass wasn't appealing. Jenn eventually bought us ponchos. We were already soaking wet, but it was nice to have some coverage.
After 5 hours, we finally paid for our tickets, went through security, and walked on the Wimbledon grounds. With grounds tickets, individuals have access to all the grounds courts, but there is no open seating on the show courts, except for Court 3. At Court 3, there was a line to wait for those few seats. After waiting in the queue for 5 hours, we were not interested in waiting in another line. The same goes for the line for returned tickets, which had already started. It would be 3 more hours before the ticket window opened to sell these tickets to the show courts, which are literally returned by people who are leaving. So, rather than wait in more lines, we tried to peek over the shoulders of the hundreds of other people standing along the sides of the grounds courts and tried to watch some tennis. We watched the Bryan brothers win their match, but otherwise, we pretty much just sat and watched tennis on the big screen projecting live tennis from the show courts. The multitudes of others sat along Henman Hill with us watching. There are much cheaper ways to watch Wimbledon on TV. It was incredibly frustrating to see how many empty reserved seats there were. We saw the same thing later on that night when we turned on the matches from our hotel room. Walking around the grounds was cool, but it was very crowded and overall, we didn't see much tennis. The museum was kind of cool and we bought a bunch of things at the gift shop including two sweatshirts because we were so cold from the wind.

I would only go back and do it again if we had reserved seats. To give you an idea of how tired we were, we fell asleep around 8pm and slept soundly until the next morning. 

WIS: We used Hilton points for our room at the Park Lane Hilton. It was an older hotel, but in decent shape. Our room was simple, but good enough. The location was perfect though right across the street from Hyde Park and walking distance from the Green Park and Hyde Park Corner tube stops.

WAM: I ran into ESPN personality Dick Vitale on the tube trip back from Wimbledon. I tried to talk to him, but he said he couldn't hear me. It was loud on the train, but I got the idea that he just didn't want to talk to me. He was with his family and he looked incredibly tired, so I didn't feel the need to bother him any further.

WTF: Maybe I am just getting old and more impatient, but I don't understand how anyone could enjoy sitting for 5 hours in the rain and cold simply for the opportunity to sit again and watch tennis on a big television screen. Since I didn't talk to one person who warned me that it isn't even remotely worth it, let me offer some advice anyone reading this who might consider one day getting the "full Wimbledon experience" by waiting in the queue for general admission tickets (or just reminding future me if I decide I want to go again). It's a waste of time and will be 5 hours of your life you never get back. If you can find reasonably priced reserved seats, buy them.