I’ve come to Beijing specifically to watch the Olympics and finally have the tickets in my hand after starting the booking process back in July 2007. I submitted my ticket application back then for fourteen events and was given seven. Athletics, swimming, table tennis and baseball finals were all a go. Opening ceremony, diving, BMX and gymnastics were not.

Then November rolled around and a friend and I waited patiently for the second round of ticketing to open up on a first-come, first-served basis. I logged in from the UK and she tried from Australia. After lots of frustration due to the payment page constantly timing out, we eventually landed another 20 events including women’s basketball finals, beach volleyball, rowing, and wrestling.

With our two weeks filled with a variety of events, we were pretty happy. So when the third round of ticket rolled around we didn’t bother trying to get any more. I wasn’t in Beijing last week when the fourth round got underway so avoided what seemed like a chaotic scramble for the last tickets.

I had been charged for lots of tickets but hadn’t heard much about where to collect them. I headed to the homepage of CoSport, the site where I bought my tickets, and found that they’d announced their office location. Lucky for me it’s just around the corner from my house.

To collect the tickets I had to show a print out of my confirmation emails and my passport as ID. After a bit of trouble locating a printer, I headed over to their office and had my tickets in under 5 minutes. There was no line, they were fast and efficient and I had no problems at all.

Here’s hoping the rest of the Olympics run as smoothly as my ticket experience has!

Kirsty is working and travelling and is in town building a website about living in Beijing. She is also a big Olympics fan and working on a London 2012 Olympics blog.