Friday, October 29 - Sunday, November 1 2010
By far the most last minute trip we’ve taken, we decided to book our trip to London about a week before we were to fly out. Why so last minute? For the past 4 years, the NFL has traveled to London to give the Brits some tasty American Football action. Only recently it occurred to us that we would actually be in close proximity to the game this year so we raced to find tickets and organized a weekend trip to London out of it.
Joining us on the trip were our friends from the “Hockey in Geneva” post, Mike and Michelle. They are big NFL fans and originally from San Francisco (before their Geneva-move) so they were especially excited to see their San Francisco 49ers play the Denver Broncos at London’s famous Wembley Stadium. As far as the rest of the world being excited for this game, not so much. These teams were arguably two of the worst teams in the league at the time of the game. The Niners (1-6) just came off a loss to one of two winless teams in the NFL. And the Broncos just gave up a near-record amount of points and lost 59-14 to the Oakland Raiders (the Raiders are also a very bad team…although they sure took care of the Seahawks). Enough football for now, we’ll get to more of that later.
Expedia has offices all over the world, and neither of us had been to the London office (in fact this would be Dave’s first time to London, period) so we decided to pay our colleagues a visit. On Friday we took an early flight out of Geneva into Heathrow and found our way to the Expedia offices (we have two separate offices there, although in close proximity of each other).
As a side note, this was the first European country we’ve been to where the official language is English. It hit us as we went out to lunch and ordered food from a street vendor who started the conversation in English. We’ve become so used to feeling bad about not understanding French that it was a nice break. Additionally, that street vendor was a BURRITO vendor!! We haven’t come across restaurants that serve burritos (or Mexican food of any sort) since we’ve been in Geneva, so this was quite the treat. :)
Our office visit was a fun opportunity to meet some of the colleagues from our larger department whom we converse with remotely but haven’t met many of them in person. It also gave us a chance to have a couple drinks with Ang’s new teammate, Pete, who is based out of London as well. After visiting a couple old quaint (yet busy) pubs and enjoying some great entertainment known as “Pete”, we said goodbye and made our way through the rain to our hotel for the night, looking forward to exploring the city the next day.
Mike was actually at a work conference on Friday so he joined us Saturday morning at our hotel in Notting Hill (yes, the same Notting Hill neighborhood featured in the Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts film). During our stay we even located the Travel Bookshop highlighted in the movie and took a quick shot of it (right). According to the crowds gathered outside, it seemed like a definite tourist destination. Not even considering the draw of the movie, Notting Hill was a great part of town to stay in with proximity to the tube (London subway system) and other popular sites, such as Hyde Park. 
First on the agenda for the day was to head to Buckingham Palace to witness the famous changing of the guards. (On our way, saw some cool residential streets and an old military building overcome with awesome red/orange ivy-- photos above.) Our research told us to get to Buckingham early, but we figured that this being the off-season for tourism, we’d be fine. Actually for the most part we were. Even though there were thousands of spectators lined up, we did manage a viewing spot only a few people back from the gates. Poor Ang, being vertically challenged, had a rough time seeing anything but we had our trusty Flipvideo and Dave’s long reach to get some footage that she could watch later. You can see some below.
Actually, the most interesting part of the whole 45-minute ceremony was that the proper English marching band broke out in a few ABBA songs. Dave’s mom, being one of the biggest ABBA / Mama Mia fans in the world, would be sad if she misses out on this when they come visit us next year.
After the changing of the guards, we took a stroll east towards the famous South Bank and River Thames. On our way we saw some classic London sites--Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, even the famous guards who are supposed to remain straight-faced. (We didn’t end up waiting in line for our own photo op. Plus, isn’t that a little cruel in a way?) 
We even had a little visitor along the way – an overtly-friendly squirrel that wasn’t afraid to get up close and ask for a treat. He made awesome fence poses too, something that our American squirrels really need to work on to stay in the “cute” department.
Since it was sunny and clear out, a rarity in London, we wanted to scale something tall for a picturesque view of downtown London. One of our options was the Tate Modern, a famous modern art museum that has a large tower that you can supposedly climb for free and get a killer view. None of the four of us are huge modern art fans, although we got sucked into one particular display. On the ground floor of the museum there were hundreds of square feet of what seemed to be gravel on the floor (at least that’s what the view from the upper floor offered, seen on the top left). We were about to protest in response to this ridiculous form of “art”, until we overheard someone saying it was actually millions of hand-carved ceramic sunflower seeds (bottom left) made by over a 1,000 people from a village in China. Still makes you scratch your head with the “why” question, but moved from ridiculous to mind-boggling on the interesting-scale, even though we’re still not sure we’re sold on it being “art”.
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| Ang with Mike and Michelle |
After subjecting ourselves to a little abstractness, we didn’t even get to experience the great views from the Tate Modern tower as we mistook the 7th floor for the top of the tower and dismissed the view as being a little lame. In hind-site we could blame it on hunger and sore feet as it was way past lunchtime and therefore time to hit up a pub for a quick refresher. The one we settled on was called The Black Friar, built in 1875. Similar to the other pubs we experienced that weekend, you order the beer from the bar, no tips necessary, and just hope that you picked a beer that was cold and had carbonation (in London, the beers with more “taste” are often served flat and just slightly above room temperature). Ang enjoyed her first savory Shepherd’s pie and Dave gorged on a lamb shank--easy to see why pub food is so popular!
After a couple more landmark stops (Somerset House, seen left and right), we enjoyed the rest of Saturday evening hanging out with Mike and Michelle and discovering the city at night. Surprisingly most London pubs close before midnight, something very contrary to what we thought of as the London nightlife (the bars and night clubs stay open later, but that’s not really our scene--we prefer the laid back pubs). Fine by us, we needed sleep after a busy day. |
| Typical Notting Hill Street |
Sunday. Game Day! We spent the first part of Sunday morning exploring the Notting Hill area a little more. We stopped in for a traditional English breakfast and were pleased to see sourdough bread on the menu, something lacking in Geneva. We also sipped on some exceptional tea like good England tourists should. The Portobello market is famous in the Notting Hill neighborhood so we wandered around for a little bit before heading over to another famous market on Brick Lane. As “fun” as markets are (Dave’s words, not Ang’s), it was a nice way to walk and experience the city a bit more.
Did we mention it was game day!? It had been a few years since our last in-person NFL game experience so we were both pretty excited. Plus it’s been a little weird to be so far away from football season over here-- we miss it (although thank heavens for www.atdhe.net which lets us watch online!). The city was definitely showing its NFL colors. There was a fan rally the day before in Trafalgar Square with a giant blowup 49er, the shops were selling Broncos and 49ers gear all over, and the NFL jerseys were everywhere!
One of the most entertaining pre-game activities for us was trying to identify (solely based on team and number) all the players’ jerseys being worn--which was surprisingly challenging when you have a crowd that is wearing any NFL jersey that they happened to own at one point in their lives… (Dave included-- #32 Ricky “Running” Watters in Seahawks blue). So many random jerseys being worn by the locals, which was great and made us feel a little pride for our home nation-- but even greater were some of the reasons they were wearing their particular jersey, like Dolphins jersey: “My parents used to vacation in Florida” and Chargers jersey: "I drove through San Diego a couple years ago". :)
Once we made it into Wembley we were pleasantly surprised with how close our seats were (we had chosen the least expensive in the bunch and were expecting very little), just six rows back from the end zone! Being a 49ers “home game”, the stadium was decked out with pro-Niner décor and advertisements. They even had personal 49ers flags for each of us, which were obnoxiously waved throughout the game (the Seahawks are in the same division as the 49ers so clearly we were Broncos fans that day). 
It was an impressive setup and even though the game started out as rough as expected with two terrible teams (we were apologizing to the British fans in our section when the first half ended 3-0), it ended with a bunch of action as the 49ers scored 21 points in the 4th quarter to seal the victory. Possibly our favorite part was that the 85,000+ capacity stadium was packed with fans and if the rest of the stadium was as British as our section, it was a sign that the game has really gained interest across seas. It was a lot of fun talking American football with British fans that really seemed to care about the league and know their stuff! At the same time it was quite endearing when Dave would get tapped on the shoulder by a nearby Brit asking for a penalty explanation. :)
The next morning, Mike had to leave us early to return back to Geneva in order to prepare for a business trip, so Michelle stuck with us for some more sightseeing. It was another excellent fall day with no rain to speak of, which made our time that much more enjoyable. Two of the many tourist attractions we enjoyed that day happened to feature memorials for Princess Diana. The first being in Hyde Park, where we started the day admiring the beautiful fall colors (top left), then made it over to the interesting water memorial (you can barely see it-- gray ring-- in the photo on the left bottom). Technically it’s a fountain, but the falling water is subtle as it’s supposed to seem like a continuous flowing ring of water (or so they say). We followed Hyde Park with a quick visit to the famous Harrods department store (largest department store in the world). This Princess Diana memorial was there (on right) because the owner of Harrods was the father of her boyfriend, also killed in the car crash.
Our next stop was over to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was originally built in 604 A.D., but has since been rebuilt 3 times due to destruction from fire and war. The HUGE building that now stands was completed in 1710. It is impossible to overlook the structure in the busy London skyline. The cathedral is loaded with history--prominent leaders such as Admiral Lord Nelson and Duke of Wellington are buried in the underground crypt. It has also been the site of many famous events such as Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral and the famous wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. We also learned how St. Paul’s has been a “symbol of hope” to the British people for centuries, where thousands of people tend to gather to celebrate victories such as VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) when WWII officially came to an end, or to mourn tragedies like 9/11. In addition to the incredible interior of the cathedral, the views from the top exterior are quite amazing--we climbed the 528 steps to the top to get our view of London (below), which we missed out on in the Tate Modern.
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