Grand final at Queens

Given Wimbledon is on whilst I'm on the Contiki tour, I decided I would go to the next best thing; the grand final of the Aegon championships at the Queens club. With a star studded line up including Murray, Wawrinka, Raonic, Dimitrov and Tsonga, I was hoping to see one of them play Kyrgios in the final. However, all of these players were upset in early rounds, some by unseeded players, including two Australians. The final ended up being between Feliciano Lopez (Spain) and Marin Cilic (Croatia), two great players who have been around for awhile. The ground was in the favour of Lopez so I cheered him on with everyone else. It was a thrilling match ending in a tie breaker which Lopez won. Lopez had always dreamed of winning Queens so it was quite an emotional ceremony as he was so elated and said it felt surreal.

Following the singles final, one of the semi finals doubles match was continued as it was paused due to rain from the previous day. Marin Cilic was again in this match with a partner I had not heard of and he was playing against Jamie Murray (UK) and Bruno Soares (Brazil). Of course the English crowd was cheering on Jamie and he and his partner Bruno quickly won the match to move onto the final to play against a French pair. The final was short as they play deciding point at deuce, Jamie and his partner won again to the delight of the crowd. 

The tennis finished around 7:30pm then I headed back to the hostel feeling pretty tired from being in the sun all afternoon. One of the girls in my room at the hostel Anne was in there when I arrived and hadn't eaten dinner either so we decided to go for a wander in search for somewhere that sells something other than pizza (there are heaps of pubs in the area where we are and they only sell pizza). This proved challenging as it was 8:30 on a Sunday night and everywhere seemed to be closed or not serving food anymore. We finally found an Italian place that had 3 salads at the bottom of their pizza menu. We went there and the salads were great, then we tried their dessert which was described as a warm dough ring filled with Nutella and mascarpone. They were delicious but so messy to eat, the Nutella and mascarpone squirted everywhere when we took a bite. 

Today I am saying farewell to my friends at the hostel and  heading off into the country to spend a few days with Adrian's sister Anne and her family.

View from my seat, clouds threatened at the start of the afternoon 

Full arena and sunny skies

Italian dessert "Dolce"