But in brief:
Friday 20th August
Got a taxi from work to the airport, which cost $60 (must... not... complain). Arrived at Athens about 1/2 an hour late, and according to the timetable on the airport's website that meant I should have missed the last bus to Lavrio, but it turns out that there was another bus leaving in an hour, so it worked out really well. The bus trip to Lavrio took about an hour, and I arrived at the Aegean I at about 11. After checking in and a quick look around the ship (the pool was only half full... but I didn't really have time anyway) I went to sleep.Saturday 21st August
Got up very late (compared to the rest of the weekend) at 7:30. Had my included breakfast on the ship, was really good, a buffet with just about all the breakfast items you would want. I then headed out to Athens. After some confusion (I thought I was going to the airport) I ended up in central Athens. So I went for a walk through the area that Soph and I stayed in two years ago, before heading off to the Olympic Complex.Getting there by metro was really easy, and the trains weren't even that crowded (I had a seat). Although when I arrived there were people pouring out of the complex, which I thought was a bit of a worry given it was only 12:30, but I guess an Athletics session, and perhaps some other event as well, had just finished. I really loved the Athens Olympic Sport Complex (OAKA)! I assume everyone has seen a lot of it on TV, but I hadn't seen anything of it at all, so my last memory was the construction site that Soph and I visited in 2002. I really loved the tunnel of arches, the pools of water, the fountains, and the stadiums themselves. It was a very impressive entrance, probably better than Sydney's.
I wandered around for a while... it was extremely hot so I spent an hour or so in the HUGE airconditioned merchandise hall, and some more time sitting in the shade watching the diving on a big screen. I headed off to the water polo, my seat was right up in a corner of the arena. Still, I did buy the cheap tickets so I can't complain, and I had a pretty good view anyway. I watched Germany thrash Spain, and then Greece beat Australia by 1 goal in a great match. It really could have gone either way, the turning point was at the end of one of the quarters where we hit the bar after a 1-on-1 with the goalie, and then they went straight up the other end and scored with a couple of seconds left. Ah well, at least it was exciting!
I headed straight back to Lavrio, just missed a bus so took about 3 hours all up. I packed up everything and got to sleep at about 11:30.
Sunday 22nd August
Up at 4:45 - the Cycling started at OAKA at 9 so I was keen to get the 5:30 bus. I made it to OAKA at about 7:45, and went straight to the cycling. I was glad I got there so early because even the warmup was great to watch! There were a lot of bikes on the track at once, 4 or 5 pursuit teams and 10 spinters. Often the sprinters would join on the back of the pursuit teams and follow them around for a few laps.Unfortunately I only had tickets to qualifying so I didn't actually see any head-to-head racing, but I saw Australians set the fastest time in all three events - Womens Sprint, Mens Sprint and Mens Team Pursuit, so it was great to be there for that!
I next headed for the basketball. I originally thought that it would also be at OAKA, but it turns out the preliminaries are at the Helliniko Olympic Complex, on the coast and a long way from OAKA. I had plenty of time though and thought it would be good to see some more stadiums. I didn't think much of Helliniko at all, for a number of reasons... but I'll expand on that later.
The basketball stadium was absolutely massive, so it probably wasn't even half full for the Australia vs Brazil game. The game itself was very exciting for the first half, but Australia completely ran away with it in the second. I watched the first quarter of the Greece vs Japan match, but I had to get to the marathon and it looked all over anyway with Greece up by 15 or so (they only just won it in the end! Pity I missed it). The trip back was a little faster (but a lot more crowded), and I made it in plenty of time. I watched some of the race from a greek takeaway place, and then headed to the place I'd picked to watch it, about 1km from the finish.
It wasn't much fun getting there... they had closed off the route I was planning to take, and it was absolutely packed near the stadium, I really had to force my way along the footpath. I got through the worst of it and found a good spot behind an rope at an angle to the road so I wouldn't be blocked by anyone. I cheered on just about all of the finishers (looking at the results I think I only missed 2 or 3). At this point the day really caught up with me so I decided to head to the airport. Was a very easy trip, so much easier than the bus journey that Soph and I did! I watched the 100m final on a TV in the departure hall, and I eventually got comfortable enough on some small side-tables next to some chairs to be able to sleep.
Monday 23rd August
My body clock woke me up exactly at my check-in time (4:30am). Annoyingly for that time in the morning there was already a large queue. The plane left Athens at 6:55 and I was at my desk at 9:15!So OK, that wasn't very brief... but I've left out lots of interesting things, I promise! I'll have them plus some photos later in the week.
3 comments:
How weird
Was that the women's basketball? 'Cause I watched that game on TV! It was a pretty good game, though thank goodness Brazil had taken to wearing yellow and blue rather than yellow and green, it was confusing enough anyway.
Re: How weird
Yes that's the game I was at. Brazil were looking really good in the first quarter, getting just about every offensive rebound, but for some reason they didn't seem to be attacking so much in the second and weren't going for the offensive rebounds... I don't know why, but it made life so much easier for us!
Re: How weird
I am amazed that we won by so much in the end, the first half had been so close. I spent a lot of the game admiring Harrower, when you see her on the field next to all the giants she just looks so little, though in reality I am sure she'd tower over me!
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