A terrific night!

Well, last night was terrific. We had a good run down to London, despite the roadworks on the M11 and an accident near Stansted that had been cleared before we'd got there. It was typical as we'd decided to go that route to avoid all the roadworks on the M1 and M25! We arrived at about 4pm, parked easily and were just bowled over by the O2 and all the places inside that were open for eats and drinks, plus the Vue cinema. The place is huge and already there was a great atmosphere with people wearing (in the main) John Cena tee-shirts and huge gold belts flung over their shoulders that Keith and I did giggle about a bit!

There were so many places to eat, we were spolit for choice! We walked to where our entrance door was and then ambled back looking at menus - it was a bit like being on holiday! We looked at Nandos, Frankie and Benny's, Las Iguanas, Pizza Express and Garfunkels, before deciding on Jimmy Monaco's who specialised in burgers. The food was very good - lovely juicy burgers served with lots of salad and french fries and a really delicious Rose wine. We were early but by the time we left, the place had filled up and there were queues for most of the restaurants.

 The back view of Keith and Mikey in the entrance

Next stop, of course, was the merchandise, and whoever says there's a recession on is lying! The queues were ten deep with most people buying tee-shirts at £25 each. Sophie wanted a John Cena teeshirt while Mikey went for a Shawn Michaels "Heartbreak Kid" top even though he had just retired from wrestling, but it was what he wanted...

We still had a while to go, so we took some things back to the car and then watched a group of children enjoy the Aqua-globes, something I think would go down well at work. They were big bubbles of air with the children inside which floated on the water and looked really good fun!

The whole area is being developed with lots of offices to lease and a lovely skyline of Canary Wharf to gaze at. I didn't take my camera as I didn't think I'd be allowed to take it into the arena (I wasn't) but I wish I'd taken some photos of the Dome. I took a couple on Sophie's phone, but haven't yet managed to download them to the laptop!

The O2 was now filling up so we had a couple of drinks in a bar before making our way to the entrance gate which was heaving with people. This was the only worrying moment as the people at the back could quite easily have pushed us forward and into the glass wall that marked the barrier to the arena itself. My bag was searched, our tickets scanned and then we were in! I had been worried about the tickets as we'd bought them from an online ticket service and I was terrified they would turn out to be fake, but they were fine and were very good seats! We had a fantastic view of the ring and the atmosphere was electric. The arena is huge and I wouldn't have wanted to be on the top tier as it was very high up indeed.

The show started at 7.30pm prompt and I won't go into all the details as I'm not really into wrestling! The main event was the live WWE Raw event, hosted by David Hasselhoff and of course, the children didn't remember him in Knight Rider or Baywatch, but he had the KITT car with him, plus the Baywatch babes! (But not Pamela Anderson!)

The childrens' favourites all appeared, including John Cena and Randy Orton and their screams and shouts just mingled with all the other screams and shouts from the immense crowd. It was a bit like Mad Max meets the Roman Gladiators as the crowd booed, chanted, screamed and shouted their heroes' names! The event was filmed live so we had pauses in the action for where the adverts would be and we filled in the time with Mexican waves and more action on the huge screen. It was tremendous and even though I've been to music concerts in the past, nothing comes close to the atmosphere I experienced. It was amazing.

It was all over at 10.30pm with a fantastic finale starring John Cena, much to Sophie's delight. He took a little boy out of the crowd which was lovely and brought home to me how much of a family entertainment this is as there were hundreds of children there all having a lovely time.

 Not my photo...sadly!!

We had one last drink (well, Keith did!) before returning to the car and it was a good move as most people had gone and we were out of the car park in minutes and through the Blackwall tunnel. Ironically, going home via the M25 and the M1 we had...yes! Roadworks and an accident between Junctions 14 and 15! Luckily the accident had gone long before  we reached it and we were home just before 1am.

Today has been quiet! Of course, first thing, we watched the wrestling which was on last night at 2am. It was really strange seeing it all again on the television and catching things we weren't able to see in the arena. It'll definitely be one to keep! As the weather has been so lovely today we had a walk into the village, a quick pint at the pub and a lazy afternoon. After all the excitement, we certainly needed it!