May 17th - It was ponding

Our first full day of this trip was spent in London. We started off by taking the tube to Wembley Stadium. We got there a little early so we spent the first 30 minutes or so looking at the displays outside about the history of the Olympics at this venue and notable British athletes who have competed in the Games. They had a display for the original marble slab that was on the walls of the old stadium that featured the medalists from the 1948 summer games. Shortly after we went into the stadium and got a tour. We saw the locker rooms, press room, and were able to walk into the stadium just the way the athletes do when playing there. One cool thing our tour guide told us was that Wembley Stadium has the most covered seats for the size of the stadium that it is in the UK. It also has the most toilets in any stadium in the world.

After the tour, we walked about Wembley Park and went into a couple stores to try to get out of the rain and then walked to lunch. We had lunch at Ecco’la, a restaurant that first opened in 2008 right around the Olympic Odyssey trip of that year. Each year after the group has gone there for lunch. On the tube from Wembley Park to the British Museum many people napped and P Ry almost fell because he wasn’t holding on when we started to move.

To get to the British Museum, we got off the tube and walked through Russell Square. The British Museum is home to many Greek and Egyptian artifacts. We saw the girl running, which is thought to be one of the first depictions of sport in art. We saw the original marble stones that decorated the Parthenon. These slabs were taken from Greece and brought to London. We saw the Rosetta Stone too.

After the British Museum, some group members walked around the area and got bubble tea and went on a search for a new camera lens. This was a long journey as we had no idea where we were going, even when using google maps. We eventually found a place. After the camera store we had a little time before dinner so we just hung around the area and then walked over to dinner in the pouring rain. We had dinner at Carluccio’s. During dinner, we spoke with Dikaia Chatziefstathiou, the Head of Knowledge Management at the IOC and a specialist in Olympism. She went around the table and connected with each person and tried to learn about their interests. The food at dinner was great but it took some time to adjust to the different restaurant service and process that happens in Europe.

After dinner, we took the tube back to the hotel. The hotel had a nice lobby with a restaurant area so that was a great place to hang out at night.