We've Been to the Paralympics

That was our exciting event last week - we went to London to the Paralympics on Thursday.  I was so nervous as it was our first trip to London as a family - I had only been to London on a school trip or a bus tour and one overnight trip with work, Andrew went with school last year, I'm not sure when Richard had been, and Eleri had never been before.

Here are a few photos:

We only had tickets to the Olympic Park but at least we were able to soak up some of the atmosphere there.  We are very disappointed that we didn't manage to get tickets in to a venue to watch a live event, but we were able to watch some events on the Live screen in the park.  On the day we tried a couple of times to get tickets in to an event, but there weren't any available :(

I was so nervous about travelling - my palms started sweating when I went to book the rail tickets a couple of days before we left LOL!  I was worried about how we were going to get from Euston over to the park but, actually, it was very simple.  We just got off our train and followed the pink signs for the Olympic Park.  Although, when we arrived at Stratford International Station, we were told that the travel tickets we had weren't actually valid for the train we had travelled on - apparently, we weren't the only people who made that mistake, lots of people had, and the staff decided to let us all through but advised us that we would need to purchase new tickets if we wanted to travel back from that station.  Then I had my suncream confiscated as we were passing through security at the entrance gate - I had taken a bottle that was too large!  As it happens, the weather wasn't brilliant, so I didn't need it anyway LOL!

We'd settled down in the afternoon to watch some events on the big screen and then it started pelting down with rain :( - we got saturated, and then decided to make our way to our hotel.  On the way back, we followed the advice to walk to West Ham station instead of using the Stratford stations which were really busy - we were told it was only about a 20 minute walk - all I can say is whoever said that must speed walk LOL! - we'd been walking about 20 minutes and then one of the volunteers who was waving us goodbye and wishing us a safe journey home said "You're half way now!!!"  The moral of this story is, if you manage to get to the Olympic Park and someone advises you to travel back in to London via West Ham station, don't believe them when they say its only a 20 minute walk!  It was a straightforward journey on the underground though.

I have to say that all the volunteers who were around the park were soooo pleasant and helpful, and they were all really cheerful.  On the way out of the park, one of the volunteers offered Eleri her pointing hand so that we could take a photo.  And there were also lots of people around the train stations giving advice about which trains to catch/how to get to places - I don't know if they are normally there or if its just throughout the time of the Olympics and Paralympics.

On Friday, we visited the Natural History Museum - I don't think we saw even half of it, and didn't manage to get in to the dinosaurs section because of the queue.  We'll have to do that again sometime.

We had a lovely time, and we really want to go to London again!  Have to save our pennies!

Anyway, enough from me - thanks for taking the time to visit.  I hope to be back soon.

Love, Andrea xx