Rugby Sevens

We had a day out at the Rugby Sevens at Twickenham last week, I has not realised what a party event that this was going to be, we turned up at 10AM and the place was relatively empty but I knew that it was going to be busy later because of the difficulty getting hold of tickets. The rugby was good but it was the crowd that was most interesting. Unbeknownst to us there is a theme to the event and the crowd all appear in fancy dress on this theme. It took us a while to put two and two together on this as the type font on the advertising and information signs were in a “monster” font and I had assumed that the monster energy drink was sponsoring the event. We were it had to be said surrounded by a number of zombies and a fair number of Honey monsters.  It transpires that they sold 75,000 tickets and I would estimate about 60,000 people in fancy dress.

The other thing that became really obvious is that I am getting old; it did feel like we were the obligatory grandparents at an 18^th birthday party later on. By about 3PM the place was busy and whilst very good natured it was turning into a party where the rugby was the entertainment but the party was the central event. A great day out but we left 2 hours before the end which I suspect was going to be far from the end of the party.    

Turkish Taxi Ride

We arrived in Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul just after 8:15PM  and had a departure from Istanbul airport at 1:15AM the next day. My research on transfers between the two airports had revealed that there was a bus to central Istanbul connecting to another bus to Istanbul airport and that the total journey time should be in the region of 3 hours or you could take a taxi for about EUR80 and it would take about 90 minutes.  I opted for what was to be one of the most terrifying taxi journeys of my life. The driver did not speak English and I think my enquiry about “how long would it take” was mistaken for “I am in a rush”, we left the airport at 160KMH and when we hit solid traffic in all the lanes  he made the concession of slowing to 100KMH whilst driving on the hard shoulder, there was seldom more than a car length gap between us and the car in front, often less.  At one point we flashed the traffic police out of the way as they were not going fast enough for the driver, 55 minutes later we arrived at Istanbul airport.  it took a couple of drinks in the lounge to calm my nerves