1. It's the world's oldest tennis tournament - even if you don't love tennis, there's something cool about the history behind the tournament that you have to respect, especially considering how hard they work to preserve and recreate it each year.
3. Wimbledon is not only known for it's tennis, but also strawberries - who doesn't love strawberries?
4. Flowers EVERYWHERE. Wimbledon's flowers are meticulously pruned and cared for daily and they make the entire complex a beautiful place to visit.
5. Royals attend. The royal family doesn't choose to attend many public outings, particularly sporting events, but they attend Wimbledon. And not only do they attend, they cheer on their country's darlings when able.
(Here's where I made an edition to this post and edited out the long segment on how perfect Kate's hair and dress are.)
Now I know those aren't reasons that would sell your average bloke on standing in line for 10 hours (I'll explain shortly). But it's not about the possible royal sighting for me, entirely. #5 goes back to #1 - the history behind the tournament is just that important, and when you do finally get into the grounds, you FEEL the significance. Now, all that said, I do love tennis. I've been watching Wimbledon and the other major tournaments with my grandparents (whom I snagged a sweatband for) since I was old enough to remember and finally picked up playing the sport a few years ago. So, when Adam and I realized that you could stand in line for general admission tickets, we said "When in England." Thankfully, we also had some fellow expats who were up for the fun.
There are a few ways to get into Wimbledon:
1. The Ballot: This is sort of like the Masters Lottery - only so many people get this option each year, and they're pricy.
2. Ticketmaster - only a few hundred tickets are released online each day of the tournament. I never even figured out how people found those.
3. The Queue (British word for line)
4. Be Royal
As hard as I try, I can't achieve #4. I'm sure we'll start signing up for the Ballot as soon as possible for next year, but I won't get my hopes up. I'm also not counting on Ticketmaster, so the Queue it is! This, according to every source out there, is also a part of the tradition, and we didn't want to miss out, so we found out as much as we could, prepared a little and gave it a shot.
Our friends live in Richmond (40 min south-ish of London) which happens to be a quick 20 min drive to Wimbledon Park. We took an Uber to the tournament at 6:30am. That's right, 6:30am. Many people camp out the night before in hopes of getting tickets to the prime 4 courts, but the rest of us are just happy to get in at all. When we got there, we were #9,989-9,992nd in line. I'm not kidding. We weren't even the end of the line as there were a few 3,000 people behind us by 7am. Fun fact - at any given time, 39,000 spectators are on the grounds - however, crowd control is implemented and only 4,000ish were let in upon opening that morning. Some of the stewards were somewhat discouraging people from sticking around by saying we were in for a long wait, and that we may not get in, but we stuck it out.
We hung out in the sun for a bit, thankfully with the shade of an umbrella and a blanket under us. We also had some snacks and the boys retrieved refreshments from a nearby shop and somehow, 10 hours passed. I know that sounds crazy, but it really did go by quickly. Maybe it was that we moved up in line every so often so we weren't sitting still, or that we had good company, or both, but it wasn't so bad. Did I mention General Admission is only 25 pounds a ticket? It's not like you stand in line that long and then have to pay an arm and a leg. 25 pounds gets you in! So around 4:30, we walked across the bridge and through those majestic security lines.
Once in, we were all like kids on Christmas morning. We were a bit famished, and thankfully the food was quite good. With our commemorative glasses in hand, we wondered around for a bit. It's amazing how close you can get to some of the courts and players. Granted, most of them were Doubles or Juniors matches, but still very cool! One of the reasons we think it was so crowded is because Andy Murray was playing that evening. Ever since he won two years ago, the Brits faith in tennis has been renewed. So we joined the other few hundred people on the hill and watched Andy dominate. For those of you who didn't keep up, things didn't fare well for him in the end.
I strongly encourage any friends out there looking for a fun summer trip in 2016 to visit us during Wimbledon. We're sincerely considering finding a tent and camping, but we'll see how I feel 360 days from now.
I had a few more fun London escapades last week, which I'll share next time on the blog. I'm planning on visiting Buckingham pretty much as soon as tours open at the end of the month, which may be the closest I ever get to seeing Kate since she chose a different day to spectate than me.
Until then, deuces!
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