Yes, had to mention the Olympics. Spent my birthday in London beginning with watching the badminton at Wembley Arena. Very impressed with the venue, the staff, the friendliness and helpfulness – only down-side was price of food and drink, but you could always bring your own.

We watched the badminton the day after the infamous eight were disqualified from the tournament. The courts looked great and our view was brilliant. This is how it was before the event filled up:

Whilst there were no British players left in the tournament, I was lucky enough to be able to see a Sri Lankan player (my mother is Sri Lankan) play on the nearest court to our end of the areana. It meant that I had someone to root for which made watching the matches even more exciting. Whilst Niluka Karunaratne ultimately lost the match, he did put up a valiant fight and won one of the games. I later found out he was the first Sri Lankan to take part in the pre-quarter final stage of badminton at the Olympics.

After our stint at the arena watching the Olympics we made our way over to Olympic Park. It was huge and by the end of the day, hotter than expected, I was tired and my feet were weary, but really glad that we went. Again the staff were all really helpful and smiley and security was a breeze. There were lots of amazing views and distorted images through glass sided buildings such as this below (my husband Matthew is the one in the check shirt taking a photograph with my son in red to his right):

I have to say I wasn’t that impressed by the arenas, nor was I keen on Anish Kapoor’s sculptural viewing platform, Orbit, which I thought would have been much more beautiful if the staircase and viewing platform were painted the same colour as the sculpture, or if it had remained a sculputre alone. However, the ‘Pringle’ velodrome was impressive…..

….and I loved the Basketball arena because it reminded me of papercuts. I thought the arena was deceptively simple but extremely beautiful.

Finally, I should mention the flowers – fantastic!