A real Olympic 40th birthday present – our London 2012 adventure UPDATED 4/14 - Page 15 - PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel
A real Olympic 40th birthday present – our London 2012 adventure UPDATED 4/14
About This Page: This is a discussion on A real Olympic 40th birthday present – our London 2012 adventure UPDATED 4/14 within the Globetrotting: General Trip Reports, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; Originally Posted by shazza
Very interesting to see the rings on the bridge, as well as the other London sights.
...
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Love the close ups of the bridge, that's awesome! Glad to hear getting around is very well marked and easy to do. Hopefully folks don't get confused.... I'm sure there will be a few though.
We did hear one this morning on our way to Wimbledon, moaning that things weren't clear... of course not - there aren't bright pink signs to point the way everywhere or anything..
I totally missed the opening ceromony. We were out of town for the day and got back very late.
I am actually hearing mixed reviews from those I have asked about it. I would like to see it though, Maybe if I get time I can find it online somwhere.
Those are such great tower bridge photos. It samazes me all the beautiful stuff you have so close to you. On Friday while we were away I hardly took any pictures. It was just plain stuff like it is here at home.
London is looking beautiful-- in your photos and what I've seen on TV. They really did a wonderful job of preparing everything-- anything that needed painting got painted, anything that needed cleaning got cleaned. The signage looks perfect. The topper is the rings on Tower Bridge-- what a great touch!
I totally missed the opening ceromony. We were out of town for the day and got back very late.
I am actually hearing mixed reviews from those I have asked about it. I would like to see it though, Maybe if I get time I can find it online somwhere.
That doesn't surprise me. When we were watching it, we knew that ouside the UK, there would be some people who'd probably be a bit bemused by the whole thing, but in a way, that was the point of it - beautifully British and we do have a sightly odd sense of humour as a nation!
Saturday 21 July – part four: there’s a guy abseiling down that building!
We got some more great views of the Tower of London as we walked along....
Look at the size of it! The old and the new together
... then we headed towards Tower Gateway station to take the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). We haven’t been on this in years. It’s a driverless system that runs through the east of London and I love the fact that they are driverless. I just find that fascinating.
We got some lovely views on the way – particularly of the skyscrapers in the Canary Wharf area.
Looking towards the O2 Arena
We also got to see the Olympic Park from a different angle, as we passed through a station that’s closed for the duration of the Games. While these are going to be an amazing boon for the capital, there’s also been a huge impact on local people, as that showed. The car park at the Westfield shopping centre has been completely closed since mid June and so has the one at the O2 Arena, which is where we usually park – hence taking the train today instead.
The Aquatics Centre
When we got into Stratford, we saw this advertising banner being unfurled. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a guy abseiling down the left side of the building.
One that was done earlier
The terminus was at Stratford, which I found interesting, as I knew that there was a Docklands Light Railway station at Stratford International, as we’d seen that earlier. We asked at the gate and they explained that we needed to get another train.
We walked through and got an overhead view of Stratford tube and DLR station. Wow – it’s massive!
We headed down to the platform we needed and got talking to one of the guys there, who explained that they were there to check how things we were going today, ahead of the Olympics. He told us that usually there aren’t any supervisors on the platform, which is how we remember the DLR, but that they’re looking to see how the services are running to see if there are any improvements or changes needed ahead of next week, which was good to hear.
He also told us to wait at the top end of the platform to see if we could get the front seats on our journey through to Stratford International, but because two rude guys decided to hog both pairs of seats. Don’t you hate people like that? We did catch a glimpse of the Olympic Park again, but I wasn’t really on the right side to get any photos.
When we arrived, we got some more photos of the Olympic village....
We weren’t sure if this was going to be used in the opening ceremony or not...
... and then we saw what we assume was one of the athletes.
We headed back into Stratford International station....
.... and down to the platform to get our train back home. My goodness, that was a huge place – this must’ve been really something to build this place!
Our train arrived....
... and we took the quick 10 minute journey back to Ebbsfleet, seeing some cool sights on the way home:
Cows! Look at that traffic!
Then we retrieved the car and headed home. It had been a great day and we’d certainly learnt a lot about travelling to the Games, which would come in very handy – starting in just a week’s time. I can’t wait!
The weather today was dry and sunny at times, with temperatures in the mid 60s. The best thing today was enjoying the Olympic atmosphere everywhere in London. The worst thing today was The funniest thing today was Today we tried taking the highspeed train into London And the result was it’s an amazing way to reach the Games. The most magical moment today was seeing the Olympic rings on Tower Bridge.
A great day, soaking up the sights and atmosphere of London all ready for the games.
The thought of a driverless, staffless DLR is a bit un-nerving, but most of these systems are pretty much automated, I guess, with the few things controlled by people mostly just leaving room for human error! All the systems seem to be working very well and the organization for the games should add a lot to the city's permanent infrastructure.
I've been managing a small amount of Olympics-watching on vacation-- definitely bad planning on my part. I could easily have planned this trip for earlier or later so I'd be home for the games. Just didn't think about it when I booked so long ago!
I've been managing a small amount of Olympics-watching on vacation-- definitely bad planning on my part. I could easily have planned this trip for earlier or later so I'd be home for the games. Just didn't think about it when I booked so long ago!
Ah but reading your trip report, you're having an amazing time to make up for it!
About This Page: This is a discussion on A real Olympic 40th birthday present – our London 2012 adventure UPDATED 4/14 within the Globetrotting: General Trip Reports, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; Originally Posted by shazza
Very interesting to see the rings on the bridge, as well as the other London sights.
...
of course not - there aren't bright pink signs to point the way everywhere or anything.. 
We asked at the gate and they explained that we needed to get another train. 
We did catch a glimpse of the Olympic Park again, but I wasn’t really on the right side to get any photos. 
Linear Mode
