LIVE your LIFE: Closing Ceremony (August 12)

Our first destination of the day was the USA house, naturally! Each country has a “house” for friends and family of the Olympicans to hang out and watch the events, but it’s very exclusive and only people with special lanyards and tickets could get in. It took awhile to find but eventually we succeeded. The entrance was heavily guarded by security so we were a bit nervous to ask, but when I asked we found out we go into the shop as long as we had proof of citizenship! It was fun being in there with some Olympic athletes and their families – we didn’t try to meet anyone or ask who they knew or anything like that because I’m sure they were just trying to shop, but their lanyards and tickets said the names of the athletes they were associated with, and the athletes themselves were pretty easy to distinguish! It would have been cool to see the rest of the house, but at least we got some USA gear!

Our next stop was the Tower of London, where we were meeting Matt (the Aussie I met in London earlier that week). We didn’t go into the Tower of London as tickets were expensive, so we just walked around it and headed to the Tower Bridge. It was so cool with the Olympic rings on it! We walked across it and ended up at a big park airing the gold medal basketball game – USA WON!! Yeahhhhhh! It was fun watching the game with so many other people around. The atmosphere all over London was just incredible! Matt (lucky duck) got tickets for the Closing Ceremony back in November so we split up.

Most country houses were really exclusive, but the Austria house opened up to the public for the closing ceremony and threw a big party! We jumped in line and got free food as we waited, and got let in and it was so fun walking through! I was greeted in just about every language I could think of as I walked through the dance floor (the entire place was the dance floor) and moved past people, and at the end there was a big group of guys with a British flag who made a big show of making the flag a bridge for us to go under. All in all – fun house! When the ceremony was about to start, we found a picnic table. Being at the actual closing ceremony would have been awesome, but this was a close second. So many different countries and languages, all together for one giant party and closing ceremony viewing – yeah, fun! We ended up next to a group from London and it turned out that they work at the Tower of London in admissions! Katie and Kristin were leaving early the next morning, but since I’d be there the guys told me to just walk up to the group ticketing office and say my name, and there’d be a ticket waiting for me. It was so nice of them! It was one of the places we hadn’t gone because of the entrance fee, so I was excited!!