The 128th Lawn Tennis Championships (or Wimbledon 2014)

We woke up bright and early this morning (and by that we mean 4:30 am, so we were waking up before some of our US readers went to bed last night). We took a series of three trains and a cab to get to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. We arrived at 8:30 to take our place in the massive queue.

We had plenty of time to take selfies

So many (this is a tiny portion of the people there)

Stefanie's Queue card, which holds your place in line

There were surprisingly few vendors (mostly, just two newspaper companies walking around). We both bought a package from the Daily Telegraph, which included a cute tennis tote bag, newspaper, foldable lawn blanket, and a choice of sunglasses or a Fair Trade chocolate bar (Nicole got chocolate, Stefanie got sunglasses #typical). 

We finally got into the real queue at 10:15 (everything before that was the queue for the queue). While we were in that queue, it was sprinkling which made us very nervous that we might get rained out. There were little vendors along the real queue (including Lavazza and Evian). They were giving out free coffee packets, mini Evian water bottles, and rain ponchos. As university students, we're always happy to find free things!

The set-up was so cute! 

Clever advertising for their Twitter 

Apparently, the amount of tennis balls used weigh the same
as a hippo! Hence this interesting piece of art work...

Once we got through security, we moved fairly quickly. We had purchased tickets (grounds tickets were 20 pounds) and were at Court 18 by 11:00. We got to watch a women's singles match, with the American Victoria Duval. Unfortunately, she lost, but we think some of her relatives were sitting next to us, which was awesome!

We got to see them take the tarp off the court and
put the net together

We were so happy to finally be done waiting!

The building with Centre Court

By the time the match ended, we were starving! We went down to the food court and picked up some lunch which we took to eat at a picnic table in a cute garden. While we were finishing up, a guy asked us if he could interview us about the food for a study. We said yes and answered a lot of questions about Wimbledon's dining options (so glad that he was recording that conversation so he can hear how awkward we were all over again).

Then, we set out for the doubles courts. We watched most of an exciting women's doubles match, while trying to catch glimpses of the Bryan brothers through the hordes of people. Every so often, we could see Tsonga through the opening to the stairs to Court 3 (a forbidden area since we're not cool rich enough to have seating tickets).

You can kind of see Tsonga serving through the crowd of
people watching Tsonga serving

We explored the Wimbledon Shop a bit before trying some of Wimbledon's famous strawberries and cream. They were so delicious! (We were so glad we decided to each get one.)

We watched a few minutes more of tennis, before asking a lady to take our picture. She asked how it looked and when we said, "Perfect!" she replied, "You're perfect!" #welovethebrits

We decided to grab some dinner at a Pret near the train station because we knew nothing would be open on campus by the time we got back. Stefanie got another yummy salad and I got a delicious prosciutto and tomato baguette.

Om nom

 Then it was time to take the three trains home, which once again went a lot smoother than we expected even if we did experience a bit of confusion. We're absolutely exhausted, but it was definitely worth it!