All good things come to an end (unfortunately) and so the final day of the Paralympics of London 2012 arrived. Boo hoo!!! I’d been lucky enough to get Wheelchair Rugby tickets for the Gold and Bronze medal matches so we headed to the park where we would meet up with my inlaws. On the way to the venue though we bumped into Stephanie Millward who was happy to have her picture taken with people whilst they held a medal – well I couldn’t pass up that opportunity even if it did mean we missed most of the first quarter of the Bronze medal match!
None of us had seen Wheelchair Rugby live before but we enjoyed both matches and theres no holds barred as they crash into each other at full speed! Australia were by far the best team out of the four and deservedly won Gold with Ryley Batt being their star player – the way he could manouvere his wheelchair around people just by shifting his weight was amazing! We had spotted Prince Edward and Stephen Fry watching, and it turned out Edward gave out the Gold medals and Fry the flowers to the Silver medal winners (Canada). You can see some pictures that I took here.
After the rugby, we hung around in the park having a spot of food (MacDonalds again – and there was a cheer when it opened for all us hungry ceremony goers!) and just waiting until it was time to meet up with our friends before going into the Stadium for the (sob) last time. Having the athletes come in before it started and therefore enjoy the whole show was a nice touch, and I think on the whole I preferred the Paralympic Closing Ceremony to the Olympic one as it was more of a show rather than a random collection of big names. And thats even though I’m not a great fan of Coldplay and don’t know most of their songs! It was sad to see the flame go out again (I booed just like last time!), but really enjoyed the big firework display which thanks to our seats we could see most of! Some pictures of the ceremony are here.
As we made our way out, it was obvious that people did not want the party to end and there were several impromptu performances, singing and dancing going on all around the stadium. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay too long (boo hoo again) as my other half was working the next day so we made our way out of the park for the last time (sob) and along to the tube which we were able to get on with no wait – yet again the transport system worked without a hitch! We had arranged to stay in the Strand Palace hotel again having stayed their the previous weekend and it having been so good and friendly and even though we were checking in at 12am it was no problem to get our bags out of the luggage storage and check in (we’d dropped our bag off in the morning). Can highly recommend it as a good place to stay in Central London!
I’ll leave my thoughts on London 2012 as a whole for another post, but it was a great final day at the Paralympics even if I am very sad that its over! Still there was still the Athletes Parade to come…