Hyde Park 02/08/12

I woke up this morning at 7am to browse the Olympic site for tickets. The hugely critised site has been teasing us since we arrived in London, advertising tickets that weren't actually available to purchase. Many times we had selected the tickets we wanted, clicked the reserve button to find out that ‘no tickets are available’ or that ‘this site is currently under maintenance’. I don't want to know how many times we have clicked that refresh button and cycled down through different events trying to salvage a ticket from somewhere.

This afternoon consisted of chasing leads, being frustrated we couldn’t get into Olympic park to meet a contact and watching as much of the Olympics on TV as we could. The Judo was the surprise success for the British that morning, with Genna Gibbons getting to the final against US reigning champion Kayla Harrison. This obviously roused a bit of tension in the flat as the athletes took to the floor, but unfortunately it was pretty clear from the off that the USA had it in the bag, it was good banter between us and the American's either way.

We had been inside all day up until around 2pm and CT was getting restless, pacing up and down and jumping around the flat. We decided we’d waited long enough and it was time to go and get some work done. The plan was get the tube down to the Olympic village to look for interviews, possible spots to film and try and buy some leftover tickets (or scalping as the American’s call it). If that failed we’d go down to Hype Park, get some food, soak up the atmosphere, do some vox pops of fans and take some pictures that we could use for our respective blogs. We took the tube from Farrington down to Liverpool street and got off at Marble arch, heading the Hype Park first.

There was live music from Lawson (I don’t know who they are either) as well as four big screens with multiple sports showing. Before we could get into this area however, we had to go through security where we were frisked and they had to conduct a full body search.

Aaron Wise, a student from Worcester looked particularly uncomfortable when the security went frisked him, so I thought I’d be funny to try and get a photo of him looking uncomfortable. It wasn't until the security guys saw me with my camera facing them they stopped what they were doing and ran over, demanding to delete anything I’d taken of them and make sure I deleted it. I tried to be sneaky and claim that camera hadn't actually been on, but they weren't satisfied and went through all my photos. Yeah... Should really have noticed that huge sign at the entrance saying no photographs.

It was surprisingly empty once we arrived inside the actual park and as you’d expect, prices were ridiculous - £3 ice creams, £11 hot dogs and so on.

We did bump into one of our BSU students however: Katelynn Thys. She had been out all day looking to do voxes and other interviews with volunteers and members of the public.

We were all pretty hungry so Aaron recommended we went to the Sherlock Holmes pub, a classic British pub located just by Trafalgar Square. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, the traffic has been nothing compared what we were informed it would be by the British media. No major traffic coming into London, no squashed, sweaty tube trips glued to each other like a pack of sausages, or at least not yet. I've been really impressed so far. Even approaching the Olympic village crowds were not overflowing.