This is our busiest day of the Olympics. We've got 9am tickets to tour St. Paul's cathedral followed by Freestyle Wrestling at ExCeL arena in the afternoon and the semifinals of men's Team Handball in the evening at the Olympic Park.
We had asked the people at the hotel which way to get to St. Paul's via Underground and they told us that it is much faster to walk. So, we walk down the street toward the Southwark bridge instead of our usual path toward the London Bridge Underground station. When we get to the Thames, we take the stairs down to the walkway that runs along the south bank of the Thames. We follow that path past the Globe theatre and pass the ugly (at least to me) Tate museum of modern art until we get to the millennium footbridge. Here is the view with St. Paul's directly in front of us:
Just before St. Paul's, I get another picture of a Wenlock statue:
We arrive at St. Paul's slightly before it opens so we wait on the stairs outside and take in the sights for a few minutes until we're told we can go in. Our tour is self-guided. Each person is given an iPhone attached to a lanyard that lets it hang from your neck and a set of headphones. The tour is divided into two sections, the main floor and upper galleries and the crypts in the basement. We start on the main floor. The iPhone tells us that this is the 4th or possibly the 5th church on this site. The current one was built by Sir Christopher Wren after the previous church was destroyed by fire in 1666. This is an Anglican church (or Church of England). The Anglicans split off from the Catholic church when the Pope would not let King Henry VIII marry and divorce Queens whenever he pleased.
One of the cool things in this church was four tablets hanging on one of the walls that list all of the Deacons of St. Paul's going back to 1090 A.D. Imagine how little was in North America at the same time!
There are sections in the tour for the artwork on the ceilings, the quire (choir), the altar and the other artwork inside. While Beth and I are listening to these sections, our clever son has figured out that if you disconnect the headphones and use the end as a stylus, you can switch the language on the tour software. Our suggestion of changing it to Mandarin does not go over well. Oh, if we can only harness this brainpower. ;-)
Sean wants to climb the stairs to the top of the church (something that I also did in 1968) so when the upper galleries open at 9:30, up we go (after a nice chat with one of the docents about why I am covered with pins). The staircases in St. Paul's are circular, but the rise per step is perhaps half that of standard stairs so it takes a lot of steps to reach the whispering gallery. This area under the steeple of the church is called the whispering gallery because a person can sit on the opposite side of the gallery (perhaps 30m (100ft) away) and be heard quite clearly even if they are whispering. Not sure of the physics involved, but it seems like the distance across the gallery is some multiple of the wavelength of human speech so that the sound from one side of the gallery is amplified at the exact opposite side of the gallery.
Sean and Beth are keen to continue up to the stone and gold galleries that face outward from the dome of St. Paul's, but I've been there and done that many years ago. I elect to sit in the Whispering gallery and contemplate the artwork above and below me while they go climb more stairs. It takes them a little over 30 minutes to go up and come back. I ask Sean how far up they got. He says that the golden gallery was as high as you can go. This is somewhat below the top of the main dome. I asked because in 1968, it was possible to climb a rickety ladder up from the golden gallery to the top of the small dome on top of the main dome. I did not make that climb because it looked a lot like climbing up the conning tower of a submarine - very little space between the stairs and the inner surface of the dome. Apparently, there are enough legal/insurance concerns about this that they don't let people do it anymore.
We only have a little time left to explore the crypts underneath the church where many of England's most famous people are buried (fill in some of the people here). The gift shop is down here as well and our tour comes with a book. I am standing near Lord Nelson's tomb when a woman comes up and asks if I would like to trade pins. She offers a Brazil team pin. She asks for one of the pins of Wenlock doing a sport. I am happy to make that trade and ask her if she is from Brazil. She says that she is and asks whether we are going to go to Brazil for the Olympics. I tell her that we are and she hands me a Rio 2016 pin. Her tour is moving on and she apologizes that she has to go. This is one of those trades where walking around with many kg (lbs) of pins is all worthwhile.
We walk back across the Millennium bridge and decide to have lunch at a place called Pizza Express. True enough, we receive our pizzas in less than ten minutes and have a nice/quick lunch.
We have about an hour to watch Olympic coverage before we head off to ExCeL arena for Wrestling. We change from the Jubilee line to the DLR at Canning town and before I can look around, there is a volunteer asking whether I will trade pins. Since most of these volunteers have only been asking for pins, I am happy to trade. Before I've completed the trade, another volunteer appears and then a third and a fourth. Fortunately for me, their supervisor shoos them away and tells them to stop bothering me. I appreciate not creating a pin riot, but this is also why the pin trading is so slow. The people who are most exposed to pin trading, the volunteers, are also generally prohibited from trading pins with the public. This is a shame because it deprives both the volunteers and the spectators the positive experiences that can come from trading pins. I understand that this is probably a reaction to the situation in Beijing where some volunteers spent more time hunting pins than they did helping spectators. Hopefully Rio will find a more balanced approach to pins.
For several days, we've had two tickets together and one ticket apart. This was generally not a problem as the third ticket was close by. Today, Beth had the separate ticket - and found that her seat did not exist. It was apparently supposed to be in a section that is now behind one of the scoreboards. She walks back down to the usher and is moved to a section on the opposite end of the arena slightly above a section where the photographers are all sitting. What a great deal except for our concerns about finding each other when everyone exist the arena!
Our session includes both preliminary, quarterfinal and semifinal matches in two weight classes (55kg and 74kg). There are three matches going on simultaneously and it is difficult to tell when a cheer goes up exactly who they are cheering. Fortunately, once the quarterfinal and semifinal matches begin, they only have one match going at a time. Here are some of the pictures that I got:
Like the Taekwondo athletes, these guys are really quick. But it seems that there is a lot less action. Most of the wrestlers do not want to gamble on getting a good hold if it means putting yourself in a vulnerable position. The only time this changes is when a wrestler is behind and has to score to stay in the match. On the other hand, the diversity in both athletes and spectators is better than for most sports.
After the match, it is back to the hotel. We had a big lunch and there is not much time before we have to leave for Team Handball so we stop at Pret a Manger for dinner. I have a crawfish salad sandwich that is brilliant.
Then it is off to Team Handball. This is a men's semifinal match so Handball has been moved from the Copper Box to the larger basketball arena. This means a longer walk because the arena is almost as far as you can get away from the park entrance and still be in the park. The arena looks like a big melted marshmallow. I have heard that this arena is temporary and that there is a good chance that it will be packed up and shipped off to Rio for the 2016 Games.
We are still looking for a few Olympic souvenirs so we head into the smaller London 2012 venue shop in the hope that some of the things we're looking for are here despite being sold out at the Olympic Superstore. I had only been there for a minute when a familiar face walks in. Chris is a physiotherapist who works for the Navy's Seal program in San Diego. He also has a long history of volunteering his services to a variety of smaller Olympic Committees. For the last 3-4 Olympics, he has been working for the team from American Samoa. We saw him march in the Opening Ceremonies on TV before leaving on this trip. Beth and I introduce him to Sean, who he has not seen in about 10 years. Chris hands Sean one of his few remaining American Samoa team pins. I ask him how the Olympics are going. He says that he is tired and ready to go home. He said that he has been helping 5 or 6 other Olympic committees that brought no medical support staff at all in addition to his work for American Samoa. He also said that he has gotten into hot water with his delegation. One of the Samoan wrestlers hurt his shoulder and had an MRI. Chris looked at the MRI and recommended to the delegation that the wrestler's injury was serious enough that he should not compete. As expected, this was not the answer that they wanted to hear. This is a common problem with the smaller and poorer delegations. They work very hard and spend considerable scarce resources to get athletes qualified to compete and they want to show results for those expenses. This can bring them into conflict with the medical staff who are trying to protect the health of the athletes.
Chris is also going to Team Handball, but enters the arena through the accredited entrance. I'm about to follow him out the door when one of the cashiers asks if I will trade pins. She only has a few pins, but I see a Samsung sponsor pin with Stonehenge on it that I like. But she is clearly overwhelmed by the number of choices on my vest. She finally narrows it down to a Wenlock sports pin and a NBC sports pin. She calls over a random person to ask which one she should take. At this point, I mention that while I am happy to trade either one, I want to point out that she could buy the Wenlock pin in either her own store or in the Olympic store for 7 pounds ($11) while she could probably not get the NBC pin except through trade. This convinces her and we complete the trade. But by the time I get out of the store, Chris is long gone. Fortunately, he also collects pins and understands.
We learned at the Wrestling that each venue has a ticket resolution tent where spectators can get help. We again have two tickets together and one separate so Beth is keen to see if there is anything they can do. They explain that with most of the tickets sold, the only way that they can resolve these problems is if they get other tickets back through the resolution process. They tell us that they don't have any tickets available right now, but might be able to do something at halftime. They also ask us whether our tickets are from Cosport. We say that they are. Apparently Cosport is becoming legendary in their inability to put groups together. The volunteers ask us to complain to Cosport since they now have thousands of complains. I read in the paper today that the IOC is considering reevaluating the way that tickets are distributed. Given our problems with Cosport, this cannot happen soon enough.
Today's match is between defending champion and gold medal favorite France and Croatia. Sean and I are sitting close to a huge group of French fans while Beth is close to a group of Croatians. Both groups are very vocal, but I think that there are perhaps twice as many French supporters.
It does not take long to figure out that this game is all about the French goalkeeper, Thiery Omeyer. Every couple of minutes, the announcer says "Save by Thiery - and all of the French fans scream OMEYER. In a sport where a typical team may score on 70% of their shots, the Croatians are only scoring on about 45% of their shots. But the Croatians are taking almost twice as many shots as the French so the score stays close almost the whole way. France ends up winning 25-22 to advance to the Gold Medal game. Here are some pictures from the match:
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