London Things to Do

The flame has been extinguished and  London‘s  2012 Olympics is over, but memories of the big event will live on as the custom built sporting arenas and public areas are refurbished and reopened to the public.

Olympic Park is set to reopen as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with the first stage, North Park, opening up in July 2013, and the area becoming East London’s biggest public park, equipped with event stages, children’s playgrounds and 35km of walkways and cycle routes.The remainder of the 560-acre (230-hectare) park, including hockey and tennis facilities, The South Plaza and stadium, the aquatic center and the Orbit, will be open by Easter of 2014.

So the Aviva Birmingham Grand Prix has reignited our flame for watching sports after a two week hiatus following the Olympics Closing Ceremony. Now the stage is set for the Paralympics which begin on August 29th and runs until September 9th.

The Paralympic Torch has been lighting up the country beginning on August 22nd with the lighting of four flames at Great Britain’s highest points: Scarfell Pike in England, Slieve Donard in Northern Ireland, Snowdon in Wales and Ben Nevis in Scotland.

Only a couple more weeks of the official English summer before kids go back to school, the openair cinema screens come down and the deckchairs in the parks are packed away for another year.

It’s been a mixed bag of weather, but that hasn’t stopped the festivities and events from livening up the city of London, especially in this year of Olympics and Paralympics, and there’s still plenty more to come.

Those at the top of their sport have left London feeling rather weighed down by gold, silver, bronze or a combination of them clanking around their necks. One ex-Olympian admitted on TV that after one game (several years ago) he borrowed a medal from a friend who had won multiple so he could get an upgrade on his flight home – bravo!

And so it comes to a close. The spectacular cauldron will be turned off, the flame returned to Greece for another four years until it travels to Rio de Janeiro.

If the Opening Ceremony was anything to judge by, the closing of London 2012 will be worth taking notice of, even if there has been a lot less publicity about it.

The dramatic site of the 2012 London Olympics, Olympic Park has been taking a break since the close of the games but plans are well under way to transform the space into the ‘Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’. Set to become East London’s biggest public park, equipped with event stages, children’s playgrounds and 35km of walkways and cycle routes, the idyllic parklands will be back on the tourist itinerary in July 2013, as the North Park reopens its gates. The remainder of the 560-acre (230-hectare) park, including hockey and tennis facilities, The South Plaza and stadium, the aquatic center and the Orbit, will be open by Easter of 2014.

Each August, on the final bank holiday weekend of the summer, the eyes of London shift west to take in one of the city’s most vibrant and voracious street carnivals. The Notting Hill Carnival is organized by the area’s vast Caribbean population and is a celebration of their roots and heritage through music, dance, food and general flamboyance. Running since 1964, the carnival is Europe’s biggest street festival, drawing in crowds of over a million spectators to gawp at the flashy costumes and join in the party.

One of London’s eight Royal Parks and in close proximity to many of central London’s tourist attractions, Hyde Park is one of the city’s most popular parks, set around the vast Serpentine lake and home to a number of poignant monuments like the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and the 7th July Memorial in honor of the victims of the 2005 London bombings.

As we all know, Olympic Football is largely being played outside London and in fact the London 2012 Olympics kicked off not in London or even England but in Cardiff, Wales making this a truly British Olympics despite its name.

So far all the dire predictions of crowds and transport chaos have failed to come true. London seems to be coping well with hosting the Olympic Games – although there are still many days remaining.

80,000 people left the opening ceremony without major delays even though the event ran well past midnight, but London kept the trains running until 2:30am – unheard of!