Thursday 9th August

Day 13 – Today is the
final of the woman’s football at Wembley, but prior to that we are going to
Gary Rhodes restaurant for a 5 course tasting meal!

We have a nice chilled morning, Miss O does some washing, it
will be nice to go home and not have a mountain of this to do. The staff at the
apartment is really nice and friendly and we have got to know them and have a
quick chat each day over our 16 day stay (to which the end is now approaching).
I update the blog and pop some pictures on and think about how to add more bits
to it once home to ensure it remains a long term memory of this trip. We are
now so pleased that Trudy and Sandra asked us to do this (despite thinking it wouldn’t
be live in time).

We head off more dressed up than usual to Gary Rhodes
restaurant, which is based in the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch (brings
back memories as this where I spent a week or two doing the train the trainer
for the Aviva rebranding training a few years ago).

We are greeted and shown to our table. It is very relaxed
and we see our taster menu, we take Wenlock along with us as he has never been
to a posh lunch before. The courses are a pea custard, pear salad, lamb, pina
colada, chocolate brownie and then tea/coffee and petis fours. We have a nice
bottle of wine to go with it and we have the most chilled 2.5 hours we have had
in the time we have been in London.

We then pop back to the apartment and get changed and make
our way to Wembley Stadium for the woman’s football match between USA and
Japan. We are due to meet several friends there but the logistics of managing
this means we only manage to meet Sue and Josh, we have a good catch up and
Josh is none too impressed that I thought he needed a young person’s wristband
in case he gets lost. We take our seats in what we later find is a world record
crowd of over 80,000 people for a woman’s game. The USA score quite early on, a
well taken goal, the stadium seems to have a higher proportion of USA fans and
the sound erupts as they score. The rest of the half is quite even, Japan play
some excellent stuff but have a lack of pace, the USA have that pace which
makes them look constantly dangerous as they break. In the second half the USA
score a fabulous second, and although Japan rally and get one back they cannot
force the equalizer. USA take the gold,
Japan the silver and Canada who defeated team GB and lost in the last minute to
USA in the semi’s take a well deserved bronze. Woman’s football has taken
another huge stride forward through these Olympics.

We head back to our apartment and catch up with the
highlights from the medals we have won today. The boxing and taekwondo were
amazing feats for our woman, and the dressage to music, Land of Hope and Glory
and the Great Escape Theme are a marvel to watch. We have got hooked these two
weeks on sports we never thought we would.

We also watch Bolt, Blake and Weir secure a clean sweep in
the 200m and the 800m world record broken.

Miss O is making last attempts to secure bronze medal
tickets for the woman’s hockey to which we set a cut off time of around midday
tomorrow. Tomorrow we have left free to chill and probably find somewhere to
watch the action on TV. So Trudy no tips for a couple of days but we are
planning a big tips day on Saturday our last day at Olympic Park for Tom Daley
and the diving.