We’ve had a lot going on these last few weeks! First up, we braved the Wimbledon Queue – aka, a very long line you can wait in to get day-of tickets to Wimbledon.
If you like sports of any kind, GO TO WIMBLEDON. It might be the best sporting event I’ve ever been to. You get to watch amazing tennis very close up, watch matches all day long, buy re-sale tickets to the Show Courts for £10 after 3:00p.m., and the ball boys and girls are hilarious. I would love to sit in on their training sessions. I cannot figure out what instruction they are given to make them flail their bodies around, at what I’m sure they think is the speed of light, to collet errant tennis balls.
Little known fact to me, before I went – Wimbledon is very close to central London. It is seven miles from our flat. It took us about 25 minutes in an Uber. The Tube probably would have taken 45 minutes.
So, how do you get tickets and what is this mysterious “queue”?
If you want to sit on one of the three main courts – the Show Courts – with a reserved seat, then you either enter a lottery in the fall, or pay an unreasonable amount of money. Or you can queue, but from what I gather you’d have to camp out overnight. Do not count on Ticketmaster – they say tickets become available day-of, but we checked daily and never saw any.
Or, you can queue starting the morning of and pay £25 for a grounds pass; what we did. It took us awhile to get our heads wrapped around what “queuing” actually is. There are lots of websites that explain it and offer advice, but we found this blogger to be the most helpful.
The grounds pass lets you wander around the grounds and pop in and out of matches on the 16 other courts. Only downside is you don’t get a reserved seat anywhere, so it can be a little annoying to watch a particular match if everyone else with a grounds pass also wants to watch that match.
We went on the Friday of the first week, which ended up being a good time to go. There were still a lot of matches being played, so we saw some really good tennis on courts 3-18. We got in the Queue at approximately 6:03 a.m., and were numbers 4031 and 4032.
The Queue is in a massive field outside the tennis grounds. You get there, find the person with the yellow flag, go get in line behind them, and get handed your queue card and guard it with your life. Then you lay down on the blanket you brought and take a nap, drink some coffee, eat a bacon bap (a breakfast sandwich consisting of bread and bacon…I don’t get it), and chat with your neighbors in the Queue. The Queue starts moving about 9:30, when they let people into an area closer to the actual entrance to Wimbledon. The grounds open at 10:30. We got in at about 10:36, so did pretty well.
Follow the flag. 
View from the coffee line back at the Queue. 
Approximately 6:05 a.m.
The Queue wasn’t’ bad, it just made for a long day, at the end of which I was ready to have a tantrum because I was too hot and the beer line too long. Regardless, we watched a great women’s singles match on Court 3, a mixed-doubles match from the front row of Court 12, and spent the rest of the day watching the Show Courts from Murray Hill.
Murray Hill 
Strawberries and cream is the thing here. 
Go Mariaaaaaa (she lost, but was awesome). 
View from the top of Court 12.
Closing thought – according to a website I read, strawberries and cream has been served at Wimbledon since 1877. Everyone gets extremely excited about it. There are articles written about strawberries and cream at Wimbledon every year. This year, vegan strawberries and cream were the news. I don’t get the obsession . . . it’s literally whole strawberries (not macerated) with liquid cream . . . wouldn’t it be better with a little sugar and whipped cream? The answer is, obviously it would be. Hopefully no British people read this, because I don’t need hate mail.
Next up, Royal Henley and Masters Henley . . . .
Unemployed and Traveling 