Wimbledon!

We collapsed into our seats on the District line train Tuesday night, excited and exhausted from our afternoon/evening at Wimbledon. On the ride home, JT says, "That was awesome. I wish we had seen someone famous, though." I stayed quiet, because I really only know the super rock stars of tennis and wouldn't have known someone famous if they came up and shook my hand. As it turns out, we had spent more than an hour watching a certain match on Court 18 between two players who, if they weren't famous before, certainly are now: We watched John Isner and Nicolas Mahut play the fourth set of what would become the longest professional tennis match in history.

 That's all 6'9" of John Isner in the back unleashing one of his unstoppable serves on Nicolas Mahut. He didn't know at the time that he'd be playing this same match for two more days.

***

When we were trying to decide where to go for a long weekend, the realization that Wimbledon started this week sealed the deal: We would go to London. Don't tickets sell out months in advance, you ask? Nope. You either apply months in advance to get tickets by lottery, or you show up the same day and stand in a loooong queue (American: line). Or, you're a member of the club, or you're royalty or famous etc. etc. But for the rest of us punters, we queue.

There are a couple of choices for queuing: You can camp out or show up reaaaally early to get one of the 6,000 grounds passes that get you access to 14 courts and, if you're really early, tickets that get you into the show courts. the other option is to turn up in the afternoon. They let more people into the grounds as other people leave, and if those people who leave had show court access, they resell these tickets to anyone willing to buy them.

We set aside Tuesday, Day 2 of Wimbledon, to try the afternoon queue. After a leisurely and incredible lunch at the Harwood Arms (post to come on that), we went a few more stops on the District line to Southfields station, followed by a quick bus ride to the All England Lawn Tenns & Croquet Club that everyone knows as "Wimbledon." The Queue at Wimbledon is as much a part of the experience as the tennis itself. The queue is across the street from the tennis at the Wimbledon Park Golf Club, up against a treeline and therefore in the shade. People in the queue have access to proper toilets and refreshment stands. There's even a booklet to read on queuing at Wimbledon.

We joined the queue at about 4 p.m. and were into Wimbledon at 6:30. This may sound dreadful, but there are far worse ways to spend 2 1/2 hours than outside in the shade with a book on a beautiful 75-degree day. Regardless, once we made it in, we were quite happy to be there. We immediately checked the board to discover that there was a minimum of one match left to play on every court -- some courts had two matches left. They play until 9 p.m. or so, so we would see plenty of tennis.

And indeed we did. The first actual tennis court we saw was Court 7, and the players are Right. There. Wow. This is awesome, we thought. No massive security (though our corkscrew was confiscated on the way in), no restrictions on photographs (though surprisingly few people actually are taking pictures during matches), just honest tennis with a very respectful crowd. We saw a queue had formed at Court 12 for the Williams sisters' doubles match later on in the evening, but the men's match before it had just started. No thanks -- we had done enough queuing for one day. We carried on, watching 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, then enjoyed a Pimms and some strawberries and cream that Wimbledon is famous for.

We wandered to the other side of the club to get a glimpse of Henman Hill, where you see spectators gathered watching the top matches on a big screen. Nearby, we noticed a decent-sized crowd gathered around Court 18, so we easily slipped in between the third and fourth sets, grabbing two seats right in front at one end of the court. We were treated to more than an hour of excellent tennis between Isner and Mahut before officials suspended play as twilight descended on south London. We remarked at the time that it was a fairly long set and the players were really well matched. It was so exciting, then, to see the rest of the game unfold over the following two days knowing that we had seen one piece of this epic match.

For two people who are, at best, casual tennis fans, it's hard to imagine a more perfect Wimbledon experience.

Mind the Gap

The day after Thanksgiving, we headed into London for a mini-break, a belated birthday present for KT. The centerpiece of the trip was a visit that afternoon to the British Museum to see a sampling China's 8000 terracotta warriors, the first exhibition outside China of this unusual archaeological find. Here's a excerpt from the wikipedia description:

The Terracotta Army was buried with the Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi) in 210-209 BC (his reign over Qin was from 247 BC to 221 BC and unified China from 221 BC to the end of his life in 210 BC). Their purpose was to help rule another empire with Shi Huangdi in the afterlife. Consequently, they are also sometimes referred to as "Qin's Armies". The Terracotta Army was discovered in March 1974 by local farmers drilling a water well to the east of Mount Lishan. Mount Lishan is also where the material to make the terracotta warriors originated. In addition to the warriors, an entire man-made necropolis for the emperor has been excavated.

I actually wasn't all that excited to see this show, because, hey, it's a bunch of similar looking statues. But I was wrong. First, the exhibit provided an impressive and clear history of China's first emperor, a story I shamefully knew little about. Second, the scope of the buried city he created with these statues is simply amazing. No two statues are identical, and the terracotta ranks go beyond soldiers--acrobats, horses, birds and more. Finally, I was moved that China had identified the burial mound where the First Emperor is but is refraining from digging it up. It hopes that non-invasive technologies will develop that will allow them to probe the site without disturbing it.

After the British Museum, we dashed over to South Kensington the subway as KT wanted to do some Christmas shopping at the Victoria & Albert museum shop (KT let me wait in a pub--she's the best wife in the world!). The V&A is also next to the Natural History museum where one of London's best outdoor skating rinks has been set up. We adored the South Kensington area--the subway stop has a nearby bakery, cheese shop, cookie store and more--and would love to live there if anyone wants to donate a million (pounds not dollars!) to let us buy a place.

The second goal of the weekend was to watch the Texas A&M vs Texas game at a sports bar hosting the London alumni clubs of both schools. So we sped away from the V&A, stopped in at Bodeans, the great BBQ place we found on a previous London trip, and rushed into the bar just after kickoff around 9pm. The Longhorns far outnumbered the Aggies, and Texas was expected to win easily, but A&M amazingly could not be stopped. You can spot KT in the right corner as everyone watches a key play. We rolled into our hotel room around 1am with our throats hoarse from shouting and celebrating the Aggie win.

We had a short agenda for Saturday. KT wanted to visit Borough Market, which was full of people, cheese, food, and more cheese. This market is one of London's oldest and most popular--Jude Law and other celebs often appear, and it's been used as location for many movies in need of a classic street market. Given that it's next to the Thames river, the Tate Modern museum, a wine mega-museum, and a brewpub, we would happily move here too if people gave us that million pounds.

Our final destination was the Tate Modern, one of the most popular museums in London (and the world). The Tate Modern houses an amazing modern art collection in a former power station and it's perhaps best known for the huge pieces of art installed in the central hall that used to house the station's turbines. The scary spider I recently wrote about was once on display in that hall. While we did speed through some of the collections and shopped again at the museum store, we were most taken with the new turbine hall installation, which has gotten everyone talking. Called Shibboleth and created by Doris Salcedo, it's a a crack in the floor (hence this post's title). That doesn't sound impressive but it is. The crack starts almost imperceptibly at one end of the huge hall and gradually widens and eventually splits into two fissures, creating a Y-shape. The gap's width never gets much bigger than the length of a foot but it's nonetheless dramatic visually. And people love it. They interact with, sticking hands into it, jumping across, lying down on the ground next to it. We spent a good 10 minutes watching people from above. The work has people guessing how Salcedo created it--this Guardian story with interview with construction experts is a fun read--as the interior of the crack has barbwire and other content that is obviously not from the Tate. Even the New York Times took note of the project yesterday. Mind the gap! -- JT

Run for your lives!

As you can see, we barely survived our London weekend, narrowly escaping this monster outside the Tate Modern museum. That's St. Paul's Cathedral across the Thames. Let's hope the creature can't swim. We'll report more on the weekend once the week slows down.--JT
(P.S. If you click on the picture, you can see the sculpture in more detail--and a helicopter in the distance that's coming to drop bombs on the alien monster!)