Rome and the Olympics

Not much blogging recently, but I have had a trip to Rome and been to load of events at the Olympics in London, all of which resulted in a lot of photos - and a lot of processing!  The Rome Photos (including quite a few of the Colloseum) and the Olympic Photos are on my main website. Rachel and I went to Rome for a few days to celebrate her finishing her GCSE exams (while Teresa was still at work and Dominic still at school).  The intention was to take a lot of photos (which we did) and to the see the sites of Rome (which we also did), including the Colloseum, St Peter's, the Vatican Museums, the Forum and the Pantheon.  We also took in the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and no end of other churches (and places to eat and drink).  The weather was very hot - in the mid-30's every day - and so we worked our way around the sites slowly, with lots of stops for drinks along the way.  I became rather fond of cafe freddo (an iced espresso), whilst Rachel became rather fond of the local lemonade - much closer to an old fashioned lemonade than Sprite!

As for the Olympics, we had managed to get tickets for all of us in the original ballot for swimming at the Olympic Park and beach volleyball at Horse Guards Parade on the first full day of the games and for show juming at Greenwich on the middle weekend.  We had also secured two tickets for basketball (which turned out to include the US "Dream" team), hockey and handball.  I managed to get four tickets to a morning athletics session from someone at work.  Teresa did not manage to get tickets in either round of the ballot, which meant she had preference when it came to the general sale, and so she managed to get us a ticket each for the mountain biking held at Hadliegh Farm near Southend.  There were also some tickets made available during the Olympics, and I managed to get myself a single ticket for a women's basketball game, two tickets for some water polo, and four tickets for one of the water polo semi-finals.  In all, it meant that between us we went to see a lot of Olympic events - to the extent that I think I watched less Olympics on the TV than for any other Olympics I can remember.  Team GB also did very well - winning a total of 29 gold medals.  That is a significant improvement since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which were going on when Rachel was born, in which the only gold medal we won was Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pincent in the men's coxless pairs, when GB finished 36th in the medal table, compared to third in London 2012.

Now I am having a few weeks "break" before the Paralympics begins (although the football season is starting before then!).