For my third day at the London Olympic Games, we finally gained entrance into the Olympic Park. In order to do that, you either need tickets to an event at one of the venues for that day, or you could have purchased grounds only passes before the games started.  Surprisingly, the security and ticket taking was pretty efficient, perhaps even the quickest of all our events.  Once on site, we wandered around to get a lay of the land, then headed towards the Aquatics Centre for our Women's 10m Platform Synchronized Diving final and medal ceremony event.  I think we had to climb eight stories of stairs to get to our seat, but we were amazed with how much we could see.  Diving is one of the events I enjoy watching every four years, so this was a neat opportunity!
The rest of Olympic Park was a bit underwhelming.  It took a long time to walk from one spot to another, with not much to entertain you in between.  We ended up just staying on the stadium half, opting not to make the trek over towards the velodrome and basketball venue.  I don't know what I was expecting, but it was definitely more exciting than what I saw.  As for the Orbit, the giant observatory structure (that looks like a roller coaster) viewed as one of the main points of interest, we couldn't get tickets to go up, so we were left to view it from afar, like most of the Olympic Park visitors.  One of my biggest disappointments had to have been not being able to see the Olympic flame in the beautiful copper petal cauldron.  Designers of the games decided not to move it outside of Olympic Stadium for the duration of the games, and since it will be dismantled after the games, only people with tickets to Athletics (i.e. track and field) events can see it.  In my opinion, this decision contradicts the theme of unity, through sport, that the Olympic games embraces.  Instead, it promotes the idea of privileged access and acts as a divisive object through it's lack of availability.  Very annoyed!

Here are some of my favorite photos from the diving: