The Olympics was fantastic, and now it's all over

We've been feeling a bit flat for the last couple of days. After all the excitement leading up to the Olympics, and the frantic ticket hunting that preceded and accompanied it, now we're feeling a bit lost. We were lucky enough to spend another few days up in London over the weekend (with many thanks to both our fantastic babysitters and hotel loyalty points). I know I've bored everyone entirely over the last few weeks with my Olympic posts, so as a final post here are some of our highlights from the last events.

Synchronised swimming was the event that I was most keen to see when we first started to look for tickets. I did really enjoy it, although the session only lasted 45 minutes which went quickly. I did learn one fact which fascinated me, synchronised swimmers train for 45 hours a week (not just the synchronised bit, but including general fitness, pilates, yoga and so on). Of course, when I thought about it, I realised that this must be true for most, if not all, top athletes. I hadn't really appreciated the time commitment involved, it's difficult to imagine what it must be like to be so dedicated to something.

We are big pizza fans over here, and we discovered a wonderful new pizza place - Franco Manca in Westfield Shopping Centre. It brought back fond memories of our favourite ever pizza, eaten many years ago in Naples. Definitely recommended if you pass one!

For a couple of sessions, our seats to the athletics were at the very back of the press stand - one of those big blocks of empty seats which were visible on the television. They filled up for the big races, but once they were over they quickly emptied out, so we were able to move down for a better view. As we were sitting there we noticed an Olympic torch being passed around below us which had been brought along by one of the spectators who had been a torch bearer. Along with everyone else we cheekily asked if we could have our photo taken with it - I was unbelievably excited!



The Closing Ceremony was amazing, we were dancing and singing along. It wasn't really what I was expecting, I thought that it would include some sort of look back at the games, montages of highlights and so on, and I must admit that I didn't really expect it to be as good as it was. There was so much going on, and it was so bright and cheerful.

The next morning we felt very down as we made our way back home. We were cheered up slightly by the new information sign pointing to Rio de Janeiro at the now empty Stratford Station!

It's been a fantastic few weeks and I know that I'm so lucky to have been able to experience so much. I never expected to be so moved by it all.