The Day that London Came to the Games.

London has been pretty quiet. Unless you’re at the venues or at the BT Live Sites it’s been business at usual in the city (as far as we can tell!) with small signs of Olympic life in the form of banners, fiberglass six foot tall mascots lining the walks and the Javelin train train that heads straight to Olympic Park. The hoards of volunteers in their pink vests, London pink, as I now think of it and the fleet of BMW cars plastered with the logo and access passes are about as much as you’ll see. Expecting enormous quantities of people, 800,000 was the estimate published, we were apprehensive about our experience — especially transportation on the Tube. To our surprise and delight, we haven’t waited more than six minutes. But today, today London showed up. The BT Live Site at Hyde Park was buzzing! Hundreds of people were picnicking and there was for the first time, a line to get inside! On the street the traffic volunteers in their London pink vests were working quickly to hold people until they could safely cross and on the path a friendly voice reminded us to have a lovely day and please do not walk in the bike path!  As I walked from the BT Live site to our next meeting I commented to another student that this – this frenetic energy, the smashing into other pedestrians, jockeying for a place on the Tube and the overflow of noise – was what I thought every day would be like at the Games.  I’m anxious to see what the weekend will bring because certainly London has shown up!!

- W.A.

Posted by olympian on August 3, 2012 | Filed under: Olympics.