Weekend in London

My first week back was expected to be pretty busy being only 2 weeks from Go-live on our project, and I assumed weekend work would be involved.  After the US dramatically squeaked by Algeria, I knew my upcoming weekend was going to revolve around the World Cup, or at least the Saturday night.  I was hoping to be able to get up to London at least on Sunday for the England v Germany game, as I thought it would be a great experience to watch the game in England.  On Friday at 6:45 PM, I found out that I would not have to work the weekend and I am sure you are all thinking that I was thrilled, but I was more angry at the fact that I was unable to get up to London on Friday night because it was at that point the realization that I would also be able to go to Wimbledon since I no longer had to work.  I quickly checked every option I could find to get to London: flights, trains, even ferries.  I needed to get to London on Friday night so I could go straight to Wimbledon and camp out all night for the tickets they sell first thing Saturday morning to the main courts, and worst case I knew it would guarantee me a ticket to the grounds.  But, unfortunately the last train was only around 8 PM, and the last flight was 9:25 which I almost booked but knew there was better chance of me missing the flight than catching it.  So I ended up booking the first train out on Saturday morning to give me a day in the city on Saturday before the USA game, head to Wimbledon after the game to camp out and sacrifice experiencing the England soccer game in the city for Wimbledon, and booked the last flight out because it was a later time than the last train, and still landed early enough in Brussels for me to take one of the last trains home to Gent. 

Since I had Friday to spend in Gent, I went to watch the World Cup games at Sint-Baafs, where I was told they had a big screen set up so I went to check it out since it is only 2 blocks from my place.  It was pretty raucous with a big group of Spain supporters and quite surprisingly a decent sized group from Chile.

After the game I went to grab some frietjes and was sitting near a fountain enjoying them and this group of girls walked up to me and by looking at their outfits it seemed it was a bachelorette party.  The presumed bachelorette came up to me and starting going on and on and on in Dutch and I just kept nodding, smiling, and enjoying my food, to see how long she would talk before stopping.  Seemingly 2-3 minutes later (that poor guy) she took a breath and I said, “sorry, Engels please” and her and her friends laughed and laughed.  Then, she started again in English and they were not asking for fair prices but they were pretty good sales women.  They were offering all types of random stuff including the entire bag of it for 100 Euros or I could cut a hole out of her pants for a Euro.  So what did I do?  I cut 2 holes out of her pants!  And it was a good thing the scissors were not sharp because I think I poked her in the leg 4 or 5 times.  Here’s the evidence:

When riding an early morning train to Brussels from Gent, I had this unexpected sense of excitement because it reminded me of my first couple months in Europe when I took the train everywhere before I really knew how to drive the manual car (especially since I hadn’t really taken a weekend trip in months).  I arrived in London Saturday morning at 9 AM and was looking forward to having a relaxing day in the city and maybe do a couple of the touristy things I still wanted to do.  I ended up relaxing a bit in St. James Park before noticing the Changing of the Guard was starting and I headed over toward Buckingham Palace to watch.  It was definitely nice to be watching it for the second time because I knew exactly what was going on and when;  I could position myself to see everything I wanted to see, and I was not running around asking questions like the majority of the other people :-).  Next, I decided to head over to the TKTS booth to see if there were tickets available for a good matinee show and I remembered that ‘Love Never Dies’, Phantom of the Opera 2, started showing in London in March and I was hoping I could somehow find a ticket for it!  No luck at TKTS, but found a ticket at a shop around the corner in Leicester Square and the show was amazing.  I will not give any details that will ruin it, but I thought it was very well done, but difficult to compare the two of them.  After the show I was on a mission to find a pub for the US game, which was not too difficult.  Going to spare you the details on this game and after the game I headed to the train to make sure I could catch one of the last trains to Wimbledon to camp out for the night.  It was pretty simple to get to Wimbledon, just one transfer at the Waterloo Station and then a 1.5 mile walk through the village to get to the queue (thank you for GPS on phone!).  I found the queue and it seemed almost everyone had tents set up and I literally just had my bag for a pillow and my coat for a blanket.  After laying down for a bit, I received my daily Wimbledon wrap up email and it seems that no one played on Sunday and this was the point I vaguely remember that they never play the middle Sunday at Wimbledon.  Long story short, I end up walking back to the village to spend 25 minutes trying to hail a cab that would take me to the city to a hotel I had stayed in before to hope they had a room available so I could have a place to sleep (and they did). 

I took the chance to sleep in on Sunday and went straight to a pub to ensure I had a good spot for the England v. Germany game.  Quick side note: in the magazine I read on the train up and both papers I had read during the weekend, there were multiple references to “drinking Pimm’s” and I hadn’t the slightest clue of what this magical English summer drink was.  The pub I found had Pimm’s and World Cup references all over the outside of it so I thought I found the perfect place and the first thing I ordered was the “Classic Pimm’s” which is Pimm’s and Lemonade, with fresh mint and fruit.  It was delicious.

I then googled Pimm’s to find out what this stuff was and it was described as a classic British gin-based drink, although I didn’t think it tasted anything like Gin and it was also dark.  I chose a great pub for atmosphere as the place was packed wall to wall and it was interesting to hear most everyone complain during the game because seemingly every single person there thought they were going to win the World Cup this year.  After the game I walked around to see if there would be any demonstrations and it was just a whole lot of very drunk people singing songs and cheering for England.  If you had no clue who won, I swear you would have thought England won.  I was able to find a nice entertaining display in Trafalgar Square where a bunch of fans started playing in the fountains singing chants and songs – again, you could have swore they won.  Check out the pics!

Added the bottom two because I know someone is wondering (Mom) what the cops were doing during all of this - and here is your answer!