Is it really so busy? I spent a week in London and didn’t see much difference comparing with August, 2010. It was some road closures during cycling events, but it was enough information about it and people could plan their trip in advance. Of course it was very busy at Stratford station in the East London where Olympic park is located, but overall tube journeys were up 5% only and except peak hours I didn’t feel anything unusual. OK, it was something unusual – it was almost no any delays during my visit though I used tube/DLR/buses extensively. I think it was too much of paranoia before even Olympic games started and the center of London was  abandon by locals. Owners of stores/restaurants in the Central London started complaining about lack of costumers – locals are not coming because of fear it will be very busy in the city, tourists who are not interested in sport didn’t come either because of that and are skipping London during games.

There is one more group of people which didn’t come to London. That is group of tourists who would love to see the games but they didn’t come because they couldn’t get tickets to any of events. When I did have difficulties to get tickets I thought it is very anticipated games and I was OK with that, but it made me angry when I read this article in “London evening standard”. It complaints that only 30000 tickets are sold for Britons in the stadium during 100 meters final. But wait.  There are total 80000 seats in the Olympic stadium: 30000 (37.5%) tickets are for Britons, 20000 (25%) seats are reserved for the “Olympic family” (including British officials) and what we have left? 30000 (37.5%) tickets for the rest of the world? Half of tickets available for public are sold to locals and you are complaining about it? Sorry, what is population of the UK? 63 millions? I won’t be looking to the world population, lets just take 750 millions people who lives in Europe. Which means in UK lives less then 8.5% population of Europe, but you are taking 50% of tickets and still complaining about it?

I was lucky to get at least couple tickets, but I was sorry for Australian guy I met in London who wasn’t able to buy any tickets. All tickets available to public are sold online, but you can’t buy it if your credit card’s billing address is outside EU. Organizers are putting more tickets for sale but who can buy it at last minute? Even if you live in UK you can’t make it to the morning session next day except the ones who live in London.

So Londoners don’t even dare complain about the Olympic games as nobody is invading your city. Games are made for you and only(mostly) for you and if there are some traffic jams or crowds in the Tube stations it is probably your neighbors are travelling.

The post Are London Olympic games for Brits only? appeared first on Vi Travel Tips.

As you should expect it was created a lot of scams and unauthorised websites which are “selling” tickets so everybody must be beware of such sites and buy tickets only from official web site www.tickets.london2012.com.

To buy tickets for the London 2012 Olympic Games from this site you must be a resident of the UK or a designated European country.

They are releasing tickets on an almost daily basis. These include tickets for Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Sailing, Volleyball and Wrestling — Freestyle, as well as a number of suite tickets at the North Greenwich Arena, where you can watch Artistic Gymnastics, Trampoline Gymnastics and Basketball.

If you can’t see available tickets now,  check in an hour or two or next day or you can just buy Olympic park entry ticket for £10 if you can’t find ticket to any specific event you want.

But you must act very fast if you see tickets you want as for every step there is only 2 minutes limit so you must have handy all information you’ll need  to buy tickets. I will show most of screen shots of all process and you will know what you should expect to see during ticket purchase process.

Firstly create an account at www.tickets.london2012.com/member/registration

Go to the event search screen after you created account and logged in:

Make sure you selected “Availability” check box before search as otherwise you’ll get all events. Even those are already sold out.

In the next step you’ll be able to select available price and add tickets to your shopping cart:

Important to know: by adding tickets to the shopping list it doesn’t mean you already own these tickets. Final tickets availability will be confirmed only in the next step by requesting tickets.

So though you can add up to 4 session to your shopping list I would do everything 1 by 1 as the tickets for the first even you select can be gonna till you select all other events you want to go.

You must act quick if you are lucky and will see reserved tickets screen as only 2 minutes allowed for making decision

Select delivery method and enter you Visa credit card details. Yes, only Visa credit cards are accepted on official tickets selling web site.

It is last step and you should get ticket purchase confirmation in your email box

Will see you at London 2012 Olympic games

The post How purchase tickets for London Olympics appeared first on Vi Travel Tips.

The post Sydney New Years Eve Fireworks 2012 appeared first on Vi Travel Tips.