Jamie @ Wembley Stadium
London, England
I arrived at the Astor Museum Inn Hostel in London around midnight because my flight from Barcelona was delayed an hour - the only travel delay I had on the entire trip. The hostel was in a great location near Russell Square around the corner from the British Museum. I had to get a shared room with 4 beds because they did not offer private rooms, but at $40/night it was worth it. A hotel in this area would have cost $500-800/night. London is a very expensive city, so it was nice to save some money on accomodations. I'd been to London before so I didn't do any sightseeing. I spent most of my five days walking around the city and shopping. I went to all the big department stores... Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Fortnum and Mason, John Lewis, Liberty, and my new favorite Selfridges, where I spent more money than anywhere else. I also spent a lot of time in the Paul Smith Sale Shop where you can last season's designs at discount prices. While I have expensive taste and spent several hundred dollars shopping, the prices aren't too bad when you consider the fact that you can get a refund for the 17.5% VAT sales tax when you leave the country. It makes up for the bad pound/dollar exchange rate.
In the five days I was in London, I got to see plenty of football. It certainly wasn't easy to get tickets, but after purchasing yearly memberships to two clubs and joining the England national team's fanclub, I was able to get tickets to three soldout matches. I met up with Dave again to see the first match Wednesday night at the brand new Wembley Stadium. England was playing their finalEuro 2008 Qualifying match against Croatia. They didn't even have to win. All they needed to do was finish with a draw to qualify for next year's European Championships which only come around once every four years. The new stadium is beautiful and to see England play at Wembley was a dream come true. Unfortunately, things didn't go so well for home side but it was a very exciting game. After 15 minutes of play, England found themselves down 0-2 and were not able to score in the first half. At the start of the second half, the England manager finally put on David Beckham which energized the crowd and the team. Twenty minutes later, the match was tied 2-2 after goals from Peter Crouch and Frank Lampard. Then, with 13 minutes left in the match, Croatia scored a third goal which England was not able to recover from and lost 2-3. The very next day, England sacked their manager, Steve McClaren.
On Thursday night I took a break from football and went to a club called Scala to see one of my current favorite bands, Bonde do Rolê, perform. Bonde do Rolê is a group from Brazil that mix rock guitars with Brazilian funk music. I like to think of them as the Beastie Boys of funk carioca. They put on a really fun show to a soldout crowd. They had everyone dancing and by the end of the show, half the audience was on the stage.
One of the things I really wanted to do in London was go to the theater, and when I found out Patrick Stewart was peforming in MacBeth, I knew that was the show I had to get into. Unfortunately, all the tickets had been soldout for months and the scalpers didn't even have any. I went to the Gielgud Theatre earlier in the week to ask how I would go about getting tickets to Friday night's performance. They told me that my best chance was to come to the theater 90 minutes before showtime and wait to see if any returns come in. So, I decided to take a chance and try to get in. I got to the theater 2 hours before showtime and there was already a line of people waiting. I waited for about 30 minutes and some returns started coming in which where offered to the people at the front of the line. Since there was still 90 minutes to go, it seemed like I had a pretty good chance of getting in. A few more tickets came in and the line got a little shorter. Finally a ticket was offered to me, but it was standing-room only. Since my knee was still bothering me, there was no way I could stand through a 3-hour show after walking around all day and standing in line for 2 hours so I turned it down expecting better tickets to come along. An hour passed and no tickets came up. I was getting very cold because that day it got really cold in London. I started thinking I should have taken the standing ticket. With just five minutes before showtime a few more tickets came up, but it wasn't looking good for me. With two minutes to go, I found myself second in line behind a couple. I knew that if a single ticket came up I would get it, but with 2 minutes to go, the chances were unlikely. Then they came out with a single ticket! I started to say I'll take it, but at the same moment a man walked up off the street with an extra ticket and the couple in front of me took the two singles. I was next in line with one minute to go until showtime and after doing the math, I didn't think there was even enough time for me to pay for a ticket and get seated in time for the show. I was about to walk away when they came out and said: "We have one single ticket for 49.50. CASH ONLY." I jumped up and said "I'll take it!" not even knowing if I had enough cash on me. I was shivering and rushed in the theater to buy the ticket and the woman told me I could calm down because there's actually about 3 minutes to go. I pulled all the bills out of my wallet and all the coins out of my pocket to find that I only had 48.77. I was 73p short (about $1.50). But it was my lucky night and the woman gave me the ticket even though I was short, and I sat in my amazing 15th row seat less than a minute before it started. I was still cold by the time the intermission came around, but the show great even though Shakespeare's plays can be a little hard to understand if you don't know the story. Patrick Stewart was great as well, but it's a good thing he had a moustache because it would have been difficult picturing Captain Picard as MacBeth.
On Saturday afternoon, I went to my next football match: Arsenal vs. Wigan at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, another huge, new, and beautiful stadium. I highly recommend seeing a match here if you're in London. I ran into Dave unexpectedly at the match. I knew he was going, but had no idea he was sitting in the section next to mine. While I'm not an Arsenal fan, I was expecting to see plenty of goals since Arsenal is in first place in the English Premiership and Wigan is 19th place and I was hoping for a good game. Wigan managed to hold on for over 80 minutes keep the match at 0-0 and I started hoping for a draw. Unfortunately, Arsenal scored twice in the last 7 minutes of the match and won 2-0. One of the things I found funny at this match was the fact that the crowd sang songs about how much they hate Tottenham, one of their rival teams from London, even though they were weren't even playing!
On Saturday night, I headed over to Hammersmith to see the big Amy Winehouse concert at the famous Apollo. I bought my ticket on eBay at about double face value knowing that with her drug and personal problems the chances of her canceling the show and me losing all my money were quite high. The doors opened at 7:00, the opening band started playing at 8:00, and I showed up around 9:00 to find the place packed and everyone waiting for Amy. So we waited. And waited. The crowd began to boo. Some people had been waiting for over 3 hours. Finally, just before 10:30 (the show was supposed to end at 11:00), Amy comes out with her band to a mix of cheers and boos. I was hoping for her to come out and do an amazing show (she did just get nominated for six Grammys including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best new Artist, and Best New Record), but I got just the opposite. And it was worth every penny. While she was performing, she left the stage several times. The band was even confused and at times didn't know what to do. She continuously played with her hair while she was singing and messed up her own words several times. At one point she left the stage for 10 minutes to let the band, who noone cares about, introduce themselves. She ended up playing most of her songs to a mix of cheers and boos until the final song when she ran off the stage and never came back leaving the band there to finish. No thank yous, goodbyes, or goodnights. It just ended. On Monday morning it was announced that she was canceling all remaining concerts and public appearances for the remainder of the year quoting "the rigours involved in touring", "the intense emotional strain", and "the interests of her health and wellbeing" as reasons. I guess I lucked out again.
On my final day in London, I went to the West Ham United vs. Tottenham Hotspur match at Upton Park, a small stadium in East London. While I was walking down Green Street to the entrances, I was reminded of the film Green Street Hooligans starring Elijah Wood, a movie about West Ham's notorious football hooligans. I looked around, but I didn't see any. The game was a much different than the other matches that I had been to in England because it was a much smaller team in a small stadium, but the fans were extremely passionate, especially today since they were playing another London team. There was plenty of singing and chanting. Final Score: 1-1.
On Sunday night I had dinner with my friends Kitty and Phil who are currently living in London and then started packing my things for my final stop: Manchester.
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