Having taken the whole of the Olympics off work, I wasn’t able to do the same for the Paralympics so was restricted to going at the weekends so I booked tickets for the first Saturday for me, my sister-in-law and a few friends.

First up was the Aquatic Centre, somewhere where I hadn’t been during the Olympics and was keen to see and experience.  Our seats weren’t too far up (thankfully as like the other venues being steeply angled its quite an effort to walk high up!), and level with the starting blocks so we had a great view.  The curve of the roof meant that we couldn’t see the spectators on the other side of the pool which is a bit odd but the atmosphere (even though we were only watching heats) was amazing!  We also saw several records, including by Ellie Simmonds who won her heat with ease (and went on later that evening to claim GOLD!).  It was (like most indoor venues) pretty warm but that didn’t stop us enjoying ourselves and screaming ourselves hoarse for each TeamGB member!!  I took a few pictures which you can see here.

Having picked up a bit of lunch (not McDonalds yet!), we started to walk over to the Basketball arena to use our Day Passes but the signs informed us that all Day Pass seats were taken (boo, hoo) so instead we headed for the Riverbank Arena to watch 7 a-side football which is for athletes with Cerebral Palsy and similar.  The second match in the session was going to be TeamGB so we wanted to go and support them!  The first match was Ukraine vs USA and Ukraine were much the better team and ran out 9-0 winners – we hoped that TeamGB would do better in the second match!  They did, but given that they were playing Brazil, it was no surprise that they lost but it was a much closer match and GB did have their chances to score.  Again you can see a few pictures here.

After dinner at McDonalds (still the fastest and easiest way to have food at the park!), my sister-in-law and I headed for the Olympic Stadium and our seats were five rows from the front just level with the 100m start line – wow!!!  We didn’t see TeamGB win any medals unfortunately, but we did see Gemma Prescott receive hers and saw several athletes competing so we still had a fantastic time.  At the end we did stay and see the final medal ceremonies (even though the stadium was emptying and there were no GB medals to be presented) as everyone deserved our support, praise and respect and it turned out that Lord Coe was presenting the medals so we got to see him quite close up.  The pictures from that night are here.

All in all, we had a fabulous day even though we didn’t see much Team GB success!