I will be headed to London in August and I have decided to try and blog while I am over there. The main purpose is it will allow me to remember things while I am over there for a week as well as allow some family and friends to check out what is going on in my solo adventure. Once we get closer to my trip, I leave LA on August 16, there might be more on here, but hopefully this works out.

08.24.2009
London Time: 4:15 AM & Los Angeles Time: 8:15 PM

And I am back in LA. A long trip, but a lot of fun and I finally got to see the EPL live.

I slept in a little on Sunday before heading down to Fulham for the SW6 Derby against Chelsea. I met up with a guy named Matt who helped me get tickets. He is originally from Houston, but currently lives in England. He was able to get me into the Golden Lion. The sign on the door claimed you had to be a season ticket holder or a regular to get in, but I got in.

We had a pint there before heading over to the Cottage Pub. The Cottage Pub is a little bit more laid back, but there are rumors that it is closing down soon. We had a few more pints in the beer garden before heading over to Craven Cottage.

As for the game, a pretty blah performance by both teams with Chelsea scoring on both of their chances. I don’t even think Fulham really had a good shot on goal. But the weather was great and the crowd was great. They were very loud, singing the whole time, even when down 2-0.

I met up with Matt after the game and we headed to another bar to have a couple more beers as we waited for the tube station to calm down. There was some friendly banter between Fulham and Chelsea fans, but most people were in high spirits, especially since England won The Ashes, their big cricket match with Australia.

I even had a good talk with a “local” getting the feel for their opinion on Dempsey/McBride/Americans. We also had a few laughs over Eddie Johnson.

Made my way back to the hotel where I noticed I drank a few more beers than I expected. Woke up this morning slightly hungover and made my way to the airport where I sat on planes for 13 hours before getting back to LA.

A fun eight days and I should hopefully add the photos to this site in the next couple of days. That is probably it for this blog, my parents appreciated it and hopefully a couple others found it fun.

08.22.2009
London Time: 7:02 PM & Los Angeles Time: 11:02 AM

And I am back. The hotel switched the password to the internet on me so I was unable to post anything last night. I am currently enjoying a pint of Boddington’s in the hotel coffee bar while watching the second half of West Brom and Ipswitch.

Yesterday was a more relaxing day as I first made my way to the far northeast of the city to go on a stadium tour of White Hart Line, Tottenham’s home stadium. While the towns of Fulham and Chelsea are small little towns full of people in the upper class, Tottenham had a bunch of pawn shops and Western Union’s. I even overheard one fan in the ticket line say something like “I support the team, but I wouldn’t want to spend a day in Tottenham.”

This tour ended up being two hours, an hour longer than Chelsea’s tour and full of more information. We also got to go to a couple more places than the Chelsea tour, although we were unable to go to the home locker room since the guy in charge of the jerseys and gear was getting everything set up for today’s game. I guess they are given four new jerseys each game plus all the training and track suits.

But like I said, tons of interesting stories like the fact the club never attended to be a professional team when it was founded in 1882. It was an amateur team until 1895 when Fulham complained that they were paying their players. All they were doing was giving the players money to buy cleats, but the FA forced them to become a professional club.

It did finally rain on Friday, but only during the tour and it ended right as I walked outside the stadium, so I lucked out. I made the trek about 75% of the way back to my hotel before jumping on the tube northwest to check out Abbey Road.

It was pretty neat to see the famous crosswalk, but it was funny to see people try to take a picture of their friends crossing the street directly in the center of the street since it is a fairly busy intersection. The Abbey Road studios is only a few feet away from the crosswalk and has a bunch of lyrics and signatures that people have signed over the years on the gates and walls.

I made my way back to the hotel to chill a bit before grabbing some dinner and beer at the Earls Court Tavern while watching Sky Sports on the TV. Sky Sports is sort of like the ESPN for England. After a couple beers, I finished the night by walking through Kensington and Chelsea and looking at the various restaurants and other shops.

Today saw me going to the Tower of London first. I ended up spending about three hours in the place checking out the various towers and buildings. I even watched a fake sword battle between two knights. The guy I was “cheering” for lost. I wanted to yell out “oh no you didn’t” when he scored a point, but I decided to keep quiet.

After the Tower of London, I ended up paying seven pounds so I could die by walking the 300 stairs to get to the top of the Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge is probably the most famous of the various bridges that cross the River Thames and most mistake it for the London Bridge. After resting at the top, I made my way back down and checked out the engine room. They also had a dirt bike on display that was the bike that Robbie Maddison used to jump the bridge last month. Maddison is that guy who does all those wild jumps in Vegas on ESPN on New Year’s Eve.

I did find the London Bridge and it is a pretty normal looking bridge. Nothing too fancy.

Next up was the Monument, which is the world’s tallest free standing stone column. It was on my way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. One of the oldest churches in London, it held Prince Charles’ and Princess Di’s wedding in 1981.

I made my way back across the river and ended the day in Central London at the Tate Modern. It had some cool things in it like this large table (at least 10 feet high) with four matching chairs for the table. The place where you sit was probably about six feet high.

It also had some Andy Warhol and other famous artists throughout, although some of this “art” is just weird to me. Apparently you can place a palm tree, roots and all, in an empty room and it is considered art. All of the video rooms usually had videos with naked people from the 1970’s in them that I didn’t care to see.

After checking out the three floors of various stuff, I made my way back to the hotel where I am now. I am going to watch the end of this game, West Brom is winning 2-0 with 10 minutes to go, and probably grab something to eat at this Italian place across the street from my hotel.

As for tomorrow, it is the SW6 Derby between Fulham and Chelsea at 4 PM. I am meeting up with one of the guys who helped me get tickets at the Golden Lion, the “Oliver Court” for Fulham fans for some beers at 1 PM. Should be a good time.

08.21.2009
London Time: 1:31 AM & Los Angeles Time: 5:31 PM

Started the morning at the British Museum which was surprisingly free which means a lot of tourists. The biggest attraction is the Rosetta Stone (According to Wikipedia: “The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact which was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of hieroglyphic writing”). I wanted to get the Rosetta Stone Learn to speak Italian tapes so I could tell the guy taking his 59th picture in front of me to move along.

The museum was alright and had some cool stuff, but you can only look at some many plates used by Egyptians in the 17th century before you start to get a little bored.

I then headed south to the Covent Garden area where I walked by the Royal Opera House and Drury Lane Royal Theaters before making my way to the Covent Garden Central Market. It had a bunch of little shops as well as a bunch of cracked out people doing sidewalk entertainment. There was also a tacky flea market type place, which reminded me of the type of stuff you would see at the Venice Boardwalk, that I checked out and even bought some old beer coasters with random soccer team logos.

Trafalgar Square was next on the agenda and I hung out next to some fountains while watching some dancers break dance. After some pretty muggy days, it was about 10 degrees cooler with a nice breeze. The breeze even caused the fountains to mist at times that felt nice.

After lounging around, I crossed the street to the National Portrait Gallery, which was also free. This was a lot more my style than the British Museum, even with the older pictures and paintings. While walking around this contemporary area contest, I stumbled across a portrait of this rapper from Minnesota named P.O.S. that some guy painted. I know of P.O.S. since my friend Art is a pretty huge fan and I even saw him open up for the Gym Class Heroes a couple years ago. It was just random and pretty wild that I found it.

I next made my way through Chinatown to get to Piccadilly Circus. Across the street was this five-story sporting goods story that I decided to check out. The place was a mad house and I ended up on the third floor since that floor was dedicated to soccer. It had the most soccer jerseys I have ever seen in one place. I was sort of like a small child in a candy store, although I was able to hold myself to buy only one jersey (Aston Villa home jersey), bringing my total to three jerseys purchased on this trip (Also: Clint Dempsey Fulham home & John Terry Chelsea away).

Although the store had most EPL teams and other European teams, the place did not have a single Fulham or West Ham (both London clubs) jersey, while it did have some Columbus Crew and LA Galaxy jerseys.

I then came back to the hotel to eat a snack and rest up before my next soccer game.

Made my way down to Craven Cottage plenty early and took in the atmosphere around the stadium. Entered the stadium pretty early so I could walk around and watch the goalies warm up. My tickets were in the Hammersmith End (the most vocal I was told) behind one of the goals about 12 rows up, prime watch out for shots area. I even got to throw one ball back to the field during warm-ups that almost hit me.

It got chilly quickly as the weather cooled off even more and the stadium is next to the River Thames. One of the few disappointments with the game was that they couldn’t sell beer at the game due to UEFA rules for Europa League matches, although I did down a hot dog that was longer and bigger than a Dodger dog.

Andy Johnson found the back of the net first for Fulham only three minutes into the game. Clint Dempsey scored an awesome goal into the corner in the beginning of the second half in the goal in front of me. Fulham added Damian Duff to the team from Newcastle United like two days ago and he help set up a goal about 15 seconds after being subbed into the game. Not a bad debut.

Fulham did allow Amkar Perm (Russian Premier League) to score once in the last few minutes that made the 100 or so fans that travelled all the way from Eastern Russia to come to the game happy. But the Cottagers won 3-1.

Compared to Millwall’s fans, Fulham was a lot more tame. I did hear the occasional cursing (the song they sing about Clint Dempsey ends with “He makes Drogba look shit”). There was a lot of chanting about Chelsea with Sunday’s game coming soon, but the Hammersmith End was a good place to sit. I am actually sitting in the row in front of where I sat tonight and like two seats over, so it should be nice again.

Another thing I have noticed with the English fans that sort of makes me laugh. Both Millwall and Fulham had fans make the “jacking off” hand motion as a taunt to opposing players when they are looking into the crowd. This is apparently considered normal behavior over here, but if I ever saw someone try that at a Dallas Mavericks game, everyone in that section would be freaked out about it.

After the game, I walked with many others through Bishop Park on our way to the Putney Bridge tube station, all in good spirits. Another successful day and home teams are 2-0-0 when I am in attendance, hopefully that is the same on Sunday. One last footy topic, Manchester United actually lost to Burnley (they were just promoted to the EPL this season) the other day. That was front page in a lot of papers this morning.

08.20.2009
London Time: 12:41 AM & Los Angeles Time: 4:41 PM

Day #3 began with a trip to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard ceremony. I got there a tad bit early, but the police started to block off the street about an hour early, so I decided to get some decent real estate along the curb so I could see something. I wasn’t able to get a spot next to the fence to see inside the courtyard area, but I was across the street so I got to see the horses, band and all the other stuff walk in and then walk out.

It got crazy as all these people show up late then try to shove their way into the front, so you have to stay your ground and throw some elbows. Also while waiting, I developed a nice sun burn on the left side of my face and neck.

I have no clue what they did exactly, but the whole process lasted like 45 minutes.

I then made my way to Westminster Abbey and the Parliament building. I just took some pictures from the outside then went looking for this restaurant located in the basement of this random building that was listed as a good place for a lunch snack in my guide book.

I finally found the place, but it was a little bit fancier than I expected. The menu was small and I only knew of a couple things and some of the things I did know did not sound too promising so I stuck with the caesar salad. I am also fairly confident that there was some weird fish in my salad, but it wasn’t too bad.

After lunch, I took a weird side exit and decided to try and take some short cuts through some alleys and such to get back to the main area. After going through some doors and whatnot, I stumbled inside a building to realize I was inside the Westminster Abbey somehow and I didn’t even have to pay. I walked around briefly before seeing I had to show a ticket to get into this one room so I quietly left.

I then decided to venture over to the Churchill War Cabinet Rooms, but I couldn’t find them. While looking for them, I found some museum for the British Calvary, which had some guys and gals on horses outside and some guy instructing them to do things. I watched for a little bit before continuing my search for the War Rooms.

After walking by the place 3-4 times, I finally found it. It was semi-hidden next to some stairs and the place is actually underground. I spent the next hour listening to a guided tour via some listening device where you punch in some number code at different things and it talks about it as you hold the device up to your ear. A pretty neat place with a lot of history.

I next headed over by Big Ben and the London Eye as there is a lot of things to do over there along the river. I decided to check out the London Aquarium, also known as Stroller Hell (sorry Stonebriar Mall, you have some competition). They had a bunch of sharks and other cool fish, but I came close to throwing a couple kids into the shark tank.

Once the line died down a bit, I got myself a ticket for the London Eye. The London Eye is this huge ferris wheel where you are in this bubble with 15-20 other people. The thing gets up to 400+ feet in the air and you are stuck in the bubble for about 30 minutes for the duration of the circle. You got some decent views of London, but it sort of got old quickly, especially when some baby in my bubble started crying about halfway through.

After my ride, I ended up grabbing some dinner at this little outdoor café next to the London Eye and people watched for a bit. There are a lot more non-English speaking foreign people in town than I ever expected.

I then walked down along the river and looked at the various shops and other things going on. Underneath the Waterloo Bridge, they have a huge outdoor used book sale going on. It also has a skate park place for skateboarders and bmx bike riders, while people spray paint graffiti on the wall. I ended up watching them for a little bit as a couple guys on bikes pulled out some 360’s.

The sun started to come down so I slowly made my way back to my hotel and actually walked a great distance back, walking through the park by Buckingham since it was so nice out at night. It also doesn’t get dark until very late.

Before stopping back at the hotel, I checked out this grocery store nearby to get some bottled water and saw they sold Dr. Pepper Zero. I didn’t even know it existed. I know of Coke Zero, but not Dr. Pepper Zero.

Tomorrow will probably consist of some more sightseeing in the morning and early afternoon before making my way to Craven Cottage for Fulham’s Europa League match. I am pretty pumped for my first game at the Cottage.

08.19.2009
London Time: 12:38 AM & Los Angeles Time: 4:38 PM

Today was my first day of some footy. After lying around in my bed this morning, I finally ventured downstairs for breakfast. It was slightly awkward sitting at a table by myself while a bunch of foreign people gave me weird looks as I had some cereal and OJ. I decided to be adventurous and tried some random meat that looked like turkey, but it was disgusting and I nearly gagged on it. Go me.

I ended up getting a Coke from the coffee shop downstairs to wash the taste out of my mouth and take in the nice weather on the outdoor patio. Speaking of the weather, it is not overly hot (70-75 degrees), but it is pretty humid so after walking around, you work up a sweat. Throw in no air flow on the tube and it can get pretty hot at times. Also, I think they only sell Coke in London. I have yet to see any Pepsi. Although they did have a Dr. Pepper in this drug store I went to this afternoon.

I took the tube down to the northern portion of Fulham to start my dad with a tour of Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s stadium. You are basically walking down this neighborhood street when you turn the corner and boom, there is this giant stadium that holds 42,000 that comes out of nowhere.

I got my pass and walked around the waiting area before all the people got signed in for the tour. They had last year’s FA Cup and this year’s FA Community Shield on display, but you couldn’t take a picture of it. You could purchase a picture of you with the trophies, but I declined.

We started the tour and the guide broke down some basics and went around our group of people asking where you were from and what team you cheer for. He had a pretty good joke for whatever team you said. I think he said something along the lines of “Wow, Fulham has fans? And in the United States?” Much like Chelsea’s team, represented by 13 different countries, the group of fans in my tour came from all over: Portugal, Canada, Holland, Germany, Scotland, among others.

I have been on a couple stadium tours before, I remember my dad and I did a tour of Chase Field (formally known as Bank One Ballpark in Arizona) once, but this tour guide was pretty good. Much like soccer fans in England, he was pretty passionate and full of knowledge. He also said a bunch of jokes that were pretty funny.

We saw various parts of the stadium including the visitor’s locker room, which was basically a bunch of hooks on the wall in a small room. I think my football locker room in eighth grade was bigger. We also saw the home locker room, the training room, the interview room and the media room where the coach gives a press conference (the media actually gets served free beer).

Finally we got to walk out the tunnel that players use before games while they piped in crowd noise over the PA. Pretty cool, although we were not allowed on the field. We ended the tour in the upper deck of the Shed End while he answered any final questions. Sort of backwards to sports in the US, but the seats closest to the field in the lower level are the cheapest, while the tickets in the upper deck on the sides are the most expensive. You do get a better view so I could see why.

With my tour pass, I was also allowed access to their stadium museum which had a tone of old photos, matchday programs, jerseys and all their trophies. They had a program from their game against the New York Cosmos from the 1970s. They also had their little flags the captains exchange before matches of big games in the back, including ones from the LA Galaxy and one from the MLS All-Stars from 2007. But it was also cool to see their two trophies from when they won the Premier League a couple years ago.

I ended my stay at Stamford Bridge in their mega of a team shop where I made a couple purchases. Chelsea is sort of a rival of Fulham, so I felt slightly dirty buying a thing or two.

I then took the tube south two more stops before getting off in the main part of Fulham. I had a nice mile walk through Bishop Park before seeing Craven Cottage. One of the reasons I picked Fulham a couple years ago aside from Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey was the stadium. It is the oldest of all the 20 teams in the EPL and has a lot of character. I got to see the famous cottage inside the stadium that has “The Fulham Football Club” on the side and the new Johnny Haynes statue (a famous old player).

I stopped by the ticket office to get my tickets for both games I will be going to this week, but had to wait as these two Russian teenagers were buying tickets for Thursday’s Europa League match. Fulham is playing some team from Russia and these guys looked excited that they travelled so far to see the game.

Like I said, it is muggy outside and throw in the long walks plus no AC in the ticket office so I had a nice sweat going. I think I made the ticket lady nervous as I was picking up my ticket in the home section for Sunday’s match against Chelsea while holding a bag from Chelsea’s store and sweating like I was doing something bad.

I then ventured inside their stadium store to find it slightly bigger than apartment. Hugely underwhelming to Chelsea’s store, which was two stories. I ended up not buying anything there as I wanted to see their other store which was 10 minutes away and I was told was bigger.

I made my way that direction to find it bigger, but still nothing compared to Chelsea’s store. As an example, Chelsea’s store has a billion home and road jerseys with no names in men’s, women’s and children’s sizes. Then for roughly their 10 biggest names, they have about 15-20 in each size in each jersey (home/road) for each player. For Fulham, they had about 10 jerseys in each size in both home and road with no names and that was it. In order to get a name and number, you had to wait while they pressed it at the store. I ended up with a Clint Dempsey #23 jersey in their home whites.

After that, I walked around the shops nearby before getting a late lunch at some pizza place. I ended up getting the “American” which was pepperoni.

Made my way back to the hotel to shower up and rest a bit before making my way to Southeast London to see Millwall and Oldham Athletic play at The New Den (Millwall’s home stadium). I left pretty early so I could give myself some time to walk around. I wrote down the directions as the stadium is not totally near any tube stop. After following my route a bit, I noticed that I was not near anything I had written down. They don’t have a lot of street signs and the few they do have, don’t always seem to point in the right direction.

After some freestyling, I finally asked someone for some help. He told me to follow him as he was sort of going the same way and once he had to split off, he would tell me where to go from there. This ended up being our small talk:

Him: Well, the East London train is out of service this summer and it stops right by the stadium.
Me: Yeah…..I ended up getting off at the Canada Water station.
Him: The Canada Water station? You REALLY did not go the right way. Luckily you are pretty early.
Me: Yeah….I purposely left early in case I got lost like this.
Him: That was a smart move.
Him (thinking to himself): What an idiot.

Ends up I went the right way for most of the trip, but ended up turning left when I needed to turn right at one point about 75% of the way there and walked like 15-20 minutes in that direction.

I finally made it the right direction and started to see jerseys going the same way until I saw the stadium. Upon walking up to the stadium, some guy stopped me asking me to sign some petition about adding a new train stop. I told him I was from the US and asked him if he really wanted me to sign it (you had to put down your address). He just said: “Sure, it will be fun for the guys who actually have to read this.” So there you go people who live around The New Den. If you get a new train stop, you can thank me.

I picked up my ticket and made my way into the stadium. I was sitting in the general admission behind one of the goals in the upper deck. Most of the few people already there were sitting in the lower portion of the upper deck so I made my way to the very top to get out of the way of people. Ends up, our section becomes 95% full and the last three rows were all 20-something guys who stand the whole time and sing/cheer/yell bad things.

I thought Iowa’s student section could be bad, but nothing tops an English football crowd. Take the random nasty things you occasionally hear and now have 50-100 guys singing them loudly. I heard such classics like “You’re a fucking cunt” (to the ref) and “Your wife is a slut and you are shit” (to guys on the opposing team warming up on the sideline down by us).

As for the game, Millwall scored first about 15 minutes into the game. Oldham was awarded a penalty kick just before halftime in the goal right in front of us, which had my section yelling the first cheer above over and over again. But Millwall’s goalie actually saved the PK causing the crowd to go bonkers.

Most of the second half was stupid fouls and yellow cards, but Oldham added some pressure in the last 10 minutes, but Millwall was able to counter in injury time and score a pretty cool second goal. The guy on the left wing sent in a cross where one guy on the far side headed the ball back across the box to someone cutting in who used his head to snap the ball into the goal. My section went nuts again. They don’t really high five, but they all hug their friends when good things happen.

The game ended shortly after to the delight of the crowd. They ended up singing some song close to “Go, Cubs, Go” and everyone left the stadium. I was able to find my way back to the tube station and back to my hotel with some tired legs.

That is about it for today. I will start hitting up all the touristy things in Central London tomorrow like Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. I am still debating whether I want to go to a concert of a band I know or not (Family Force 5 – I saw them open up for 3OH!3 back in April). I will see how tired I am.