Olympic Opening Ceremony Concert @ Hyde Park

At the start of the week, RetailChoice, a media company I work with, offered me tickets to the Opening Ceremony Concert at Hyde Park. My flatmate was heading to it, and it looked like a good night with Duran Duran, Stereophonics and Snow Patrol, so there was no way that I was going to pass that up. 

D was going to be at a pub behind Hyde Park from 3.30 (lucky for some), but with Friday being a busy day for me, I didn't get away from work until around 5.40. I was dreading the trip there, as I was going to have to be on the central line, which was one of the main lines to the Olympic Stadium. There was also due to be around 70,000 people at Hyde Park, so I was guessing my trip would take around as hour to get there. I was amazed when I arrived at the platform, and a tube pulled up, and there were plenty of empty seats. Maybe this fear I had of the Olympics was uncalled for and the city might be bearable in the upcoming weeks. By 6pm I was walking in to the bar, and meeting everyone else that was going that night. It was a mixture of people from other agencies, who all turned out to be great fun.

We stayed at the pub for a couple of hours, until it got to 8pm and we decided that we should really get to the concert. Just as we were walking out of the pub, the weather decided to test us, and it started raining lightly. Having left my umbrella on the tube a few weeks earlier I stopped outside a shop to ponder running in to buy an umbrella. It seemed no one else had umbrella's either, so we decided to all get hats instead! 

We arrived half way through Duran Duran, stopping to pose for photo's, watching the jet's fly over and strolling through Hyde Park. The concert flicked between the opening ceremony, and music. The only part of the athlete's walking through the stadium apart from GB at the end was M-N, so I got to get all excited when New Zealand came on the screen. I was very impressed with the opening ceremony, loving Mr Bean, James Bond and the Queen, JK Rowling reading Peter Pan and Paul McCartney, on top of the whole ceremony as a whole. It made me proud to be in the UK and be part of these olympics. We stayed until the end, I was hoping there would be fire works but no such luck. Not wanting to risk the tube's since it was nearly 1am by the time we left, I tried to navigate the buses home, which ended up taking a lot longer than desired. All in all, was a really fun night, and thanks to Daniella for the invite and spoiling us all night! 

Our hat selections in Hyde Park

Jetplanes!

oooh pretty

Horsey's warming up for a night of work

Strike a pose

D and I

Duran Duran... we got there a bit late for good spots!

Still cranking the hats

Snow Patrol from afar

Fires and flames

Went out to dinner tonight with an old colleague, it was well overdue. Started off with delicious pizza's from Fire & Stone in Shoreditch, and then after that were cocktails. Ended up at Waterloo to see candle show - great timing.

Good ol' jugs of cocktails

St Pauls

St Pauls at night

Hundred's of candles!

Everyone taking photo's

Flames

The laser lights

Looking down at all of the boats on the Thames

St Pauls in the distance

The Eye, Big Ben and the moon

Waterloo is still busy at midnight

Leading up to D Day...

The Olympics are something that I am dreading... When it affects main lines you're traveling daily, you freak out. The start of my fear was beginning with today. The torch relay, it was meant to go past work at 0930 hours, when that's the time we start work.I thought I'd be proactive and get in before that. The results were good. I got to work in normal travel time plus 20 mins, but got to see the torch go past as well...

People starting to wait a couple of hours beforehand

Crowd's are starting to gather near work

Going up to the lobby - looking out from the escalator

Looking down from the lobby

View from the office down on to Museum of London

The start of the trucks getting everyone in the spirit

London in our 4 days of summer.

I finally have a lunch friend at work, E, who has just started on our team. We went for a walk one day this week and we got to witness some crazy art around the city and make the most of the Olympic atmosphere. There were people dancing showing their pants (undies) on beds in public and the weird Olympic statues. It was a lovely sunny day, and there were even boys swimming in fountains, even though they're full on chemicals to stop the algae from turning it all green.

Crazy bed dancing

It's so hot in London people are swimming in chemical fountains

OE Travel Blogs

You can check out some of my blog's on OE Travel Blogs, a great place to find travel tips, meet travelers and compare tours! A summary of my Dubai blog has just gone up, think I saw that it's blog of the month for July! *blush*

OE Travel Blogs

My Dubai blog on OE Travel Blogs

 

The Shard opening

One of the benefits of my new job is getting wined and dined and schmoozed by media companies. One of the first parties that I got invited to was on a roof top terrace at the Double Tree Hilton over looking London last Thursday night. 

One of the only buildings to make up the London "skyline" is the Shard. It's to be the tallest building in Europe (for now) and even though it looks unfinished, the opening happened to be on the same night as the media party. There was talk of a spectacular laser show and the building being lit up for the grand unveiling (even though 12 million people had seen the thing being built, it's not like they'd put a curtain around it during the past 3 years). We were in prime position for this. A little over-rated, but hey, at least we got to see it. The free alcohol and canapes weren't that bad of an environment to have seen it either.