Our Trip to Wembly Stadium For a Little Football

Kristen was lucky enough to score two tickets to last night's international friendly match between England and Ghana.  Despite it being a friendly, you would have thought it was the world cup final for many of the 80,000+ people who packed Wembly stadium.

We had great seats and were shielded from the crazies for the most part.  I will say that the Ghana fans came out in force, and controlled the category of "obsessive cheering".  Literally, anytime a player from Ghana found open space and successfully passed the ball, their fans would go nuts.

As expected, England controlled the first half (despite not fielding a number of their top players), ending the first 45 minutes up 1-0, but they really should have had more.  The second half was a bit more even, with Ghana stealing a stoppage time goal to earn a draw, and perhaps England's respect (literally, when Ghana scored to tie it, I thought the stadium was going to crumble...I mean, I'm pretty sure I hugged a random old woman just because I felt like I needed to join in).

Anyways, it was a great atmosphere and a very entertaining game.  Despite my Red Sox obsession, I can honestly say there is no parallel in the US....these fans are completely nuts, and I love it.

Here are some pics and videos form last night....

Walking up to the stadium off the Tube......

Ghana fans pregame.....

A bit of a closer look at the stadium....



Inside view from our seats before the game.....

Flag ceremony...

 

There was a huge security presence....especially on the Ghana side...



Video of right after Ghana scored in stoppage time to tie it, clearly the guys right in front of us were not Ghana fans....



To Do List Update

We had a busy weekend of walking all along the Thames to see the London Eye, Houses of Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey (mostly from the outside).  Lots of good pics, and it was beautiful weather to walk around.  On Sunday we also went to the Tower of London, which continues to be one of my favorite touristy things in London.  Here I am during our walk on Saturday:

We have some good self-photographs too from St Paul's and the Tower of London.  I'll share them when we get them uploaded!

Also, I am happy to report solid progress on the London to-do list:

1.  Tower of London - went on Sunday

2.  Tate Modern Museum - afternoon visit in February (great thing to do by yourself, for future visitors)

3.  National Gallery - one of the first things Derek and I did together...we loved the impressionist rooms

4.  Harrod's - checked off very early on (shocking)

5.  At least a couple of shows in the West End - three down, ??? to go

7.  Ireland - flights booked for when Erin and Eric visit

8.  Spain - working on dates for Barcelona

15.  The Portobello Road Market - see aforementioned plate purchase
16.  St. Paul's Cathedral - visited this weekend, but saving the full tour for Mom and Dad's visit

17.  Westminster Abbey - saw the outside, need to go inside

18.  Houses of Parliament - ditto

Phew - less than four months left to do the rest, plus see a football match, go to Bath, Amsterdam, and maybe Scotland.  We're going to be tired by July!

First Visitors!

I was so excited to have my first visitors last weekend. My Aunt Joyce was here for five days, and did a wonderful job of keeping me company while Derek visited the Red Sox (it was sad to see her go after we had such a great time). We lots of fun girl stuff, including seeing a show, sitting in cafes, and shopping for antiques and jewelery on Portobello Road.

On Saturday, we saw We Will Rock You with my friend Deb, and had lots of fun wandering around the West End and Soho. We had brunch in a French restaurant that was delicious, and heard all about Deb's recent business trip to India.

On Sunday, we went to the Portobello Road market.  The homes are absolutely beautiful over in Notting Hill, and the market had so many unique pieces of jewelery, vintage maps, pretty scarves, and many other tempting baubles.

Fortunately, I kept it together and the only thing I bought was an antique china bread plate. I got this idea at a restaurant here to collect little plates in all different china patterns so that when we're back home with our family and friends (who we miss so much right now), we can use an interesting variety of plates for appetizers at our house. My goal is to never spend more than $5 on one, so that I feel like I can use them whenever I want. I feel like it seems kind of weird when I type it, but I think it will be cool in practice. Here she is - mini plate numero uno:

When in doubt...Leprechauns!

I got to go to Dublin for work last week, which turned into about 50% work and 50% "a pint with the lads".  Dublin was great - lots of history, nice people, and enough pubs to last a lifetime.  The hotel I stayed in is actually an old Catholic schoolhouse that was built in 1861 and converted to a hotel in 1998.  My room was very cute and bed-and-breakfast-esque:

Our hosts in the Dublin office were very friendly and knowledgeable, and we got to enjoy O'Donoghue's Pub, complete with a live Irish band.  I also had my first Guinness, which was available on four of the twelve taps at the Schoolhouse hotel's bar (I won't divulge how many I had after that).  While I'm not much of a beer drinker, I do like to get the full experience of my surroundings!

The rest of my experience was pretty much as Irish as the hotel and the Guinness.  I learned that the songs we used to sing at the St. Patrick's Church St. Patrick's Day celebration, are, in fact, authentically Irish.  This discovery earned me the right to sing "Molly Malone" with several Irish gentlemen.  Seriously...I knew this song...and as you can hear from the audience, so does everyone else in Ireland:

Oh...and to explain the title of this post, one of the Irish "lads" I was with made some sort of leprechaun joke at dinner, and they all cracked up laughing, and another one yelled "When in doubt....LEPRECHAUNS!!!"  I almost choked on my Guinness.  I didn't realize that the little green men were actually something that came up in Ireland.  I was proved wrong.  Cheers!

Weekend Exploring

We had a great weekend of exploring a chilly but mostly sunny London.  On Saturday, we walked around the Marylebone area, which has lots of small shops and cute neighborhoods.  It reminded me a little bit of being in Boston, with lots of small townhouse-style buildings and small streets, except that the buildings are all different colors instead of brick.  This is a picture we took of a small residential street:

What was the best thing about this neighborhood, you may ask?  The cheese room.  That's right - we went to this store near Derek's office (http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/), which has a climate controlled room that houses hundreds of different kinds of cheese to choose from.    This is probably a third of the selection:

You just go in, and say to a very helpful British employee, "We liiiiiike blah blah blah kinds of cheese."  And they just select a couple for you to taste and then you can buy what you like.  It's fantastic.

We also did some stuff that did not involve food, believe it or not.  On Sunday, we walked through Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, and spent a couple of hours in the National Gallery (the big art museum in London).  I am not going to lie - I went straight for the wing with Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin, etc.  Derek, on the other hand, was fascinated by still lifes.  It seems he is drawn to the precision of paintings that look like photographs.  This is one of my favorite Van Goghs, A Wheatfield, with Cyprusses...has been since I saw it here in London in college:

While I have no expertise in art whatsoever (as you may have guessed), I just like the way it seems like everything in the picture is moving in the wind, and the colors are beautiful. 

We rounded out our weekend with a nice Sunday Roast at a pub down the street, and have started another busy week at work!

West End Theatre

As you may recall, one of the things on my to-do list was seeing a show in the West End (London's theatre district).  Do you see my fancy British spelling of "theatre"?  It seems to make it more festive, I think.  This week, we checked it off the list!  We went to see Legally Blonde, a very well-reviewed musical here. 

It was a really fun show.  There were some questionable American accents, but the music was great.  They even had real dogs in the show!  It was  interesting to see what the British audience found entertaining.  There seems to be a lot of making fun of the Irish and the Americans.  I have to admit, however, that I teared up a little when I first heard Elle Woods' offensively American accent.  It made me feel very homesick.  

We were pleased to discover that if we go to a show during the week, we can find very discounted theatre tickets.  There are so many great shows, so we are looking forward to going again soon.

Before the show, we visited a cute French restaurant, mostly in search of french onion Soup, which we discovered in Paris last year (yes...I know that we didn't discover, it but we had never really thought twice about it before and now we love it).  Cafe des Amis had many good pre-theatre dinner options, and it was only a few blocks away from the show.  I'm not quite an expert yet, but I think the key to delicious french onion soup is gruyere cheese.  Other types of cheese just aren't the same.  If anyone has a chance to test that theory, let me know.  Bon Appetit!

Bringing Boston to London: Complaining About the Weather

It took over a week, but Kristen finally "cleared me" for blogging, although she still remains concerned about my ability to create an international incident via the Internet...

Anyways, I assume it's fair to say that most of this blog's audience know that I have a borderline irrational interest in weather.  I don't pretend to hide it.....should I?  That's debatable, perhaps I should to save face a bit.   Oh yeah, I like maps too…put the two together (which often happens) and it's almost as good as watching the Red Sox on a summer evening.

Moving right along…. as you can imagine, since arriving, I've been all about the weather here in London.   New city, new continent, new maps, new geographical influences, my tail is wagging.  My weather.com iPhone app has been in overdrive since getting here over a week ago.  So here are my initial thoughts:

Just like back home, the weather here doesn't make any sense.

Bostonians are known for their sincere ability to complain about the weather; Londoners however, take the constant overcast and high percentage chance of showers on a daily basis in stride. 

Overall, it's considerably warmer here than back home, so there's that.  It really doesn't rain as much as most people may believe, but don't you dare think about leaving your flat without an umbrella.  It's more important than having your keys.  The one thing I know at this point is regardless of what it looks like outside, there is a good chance it'll rain on you.  Every Londoner carries an average of 1.73 umbrellas on them at any point during the day.  Wiki that, it's fact.

Earlier today Kristen and I looked at the 10 day forecast, which showed mostly sunny skies and highs around 50ish most of the week…..we both laughed and said "yeah right".  The same way that today's weather was supposed to be partly cloudy and 52 (it rained on us for a solid 4 hours on Sunday as we walked around the Tower of London area).

In general I'll take cloudy and 52 over the 5 meters of snow back home (you see that?  "meters" …who's assimilated? Yes I realize it's not exactly accurate, but you get the point).  London's weather simply can't be trusted.  I know we often complain about the meteorologists back home, but it's gotta be the easiest job in the world here "cloudy with a chance of showers, temperatures in the 50's" – day in, day out. 

No analysis or scientific reasoning needed, just make the forecast and go back to eating crumpets.