Today's schedule was a trip into London, a game and then back to the hotel. It was a great day, but full of mishaps.
Traveling today was miserable. As I mentioned, we are about an hour and a half from London. Today was one of the hottest days of the year, reaching temperatures in the 90's. Mix that with a double decker bus that has no air and no windows; I was about to pass out! Next, the boys had to cancel their game because of group of "travelers" or gypsys that came into the town and decided to take over the fields. The law allows the police to kick them out but with a 48 hour window. The traffic leaving London to our games was extremely bad; it took an extra hour to get to the game, and we were late. Finally, on our way back from our game, we got held up in traffic due to an accident. We stood at the same point for about two hours.
With all that being said, we still had such a great day.
The bus dropped us off at the London Eye. We jumped in line right away (Dad made me "move quickly" most of the time this week). It turned out to be a good idea as we were up in a car soon after and when we got out, the lines were hundreds deep.
The London Eye is well built, as my dad said, and he didn't have any problem with going for the ride. He is not a fan of ferris wheel type rides, even at the county fair. They loaded 25 people into a pod, and we had some awesome views of the city.
We headed straight to the tube after we got off the London Eye and headed to Abbey Road. We stopped in the Abbey Road Studio to check out all the Beatles stuff. Then without getting hit, we crossed the iconic street. There were a lot of others doing the same thing; I guess it's like that every single day.
We got back on the tube and headed to find a pub; my dad wanted some Fish & Chips. We found a really neat place, and he said it was very good. None for me, thanks, seafood is not my thing. I had a steak instead. We walked off the food and stopped at Sherlock Holmes Pub. Since we didn't have time to go to Baker's Street, I wanted to stop in to check it out. It was so cool seeing all the items they had throughout the pub. They even had a beer named after Sherlock and Watson.
We met up with the group to head towards our game. We played at a professional team's training grounds. The fields were in excellent condition. Our game was on one of their newest fields with the latest turf technology. Our younger girls team earned Three Lions United its first International WIN; beating the other club 2-1. Our team did really well, also. The club team we played had three different levels, and we played three 20 minute periods. We had the advantage the first period playing against their U17 equivalent team and ended 0-0. We continued to play a second period to a 0-0 score with their next oldest team -- their U18 team and older girls coming back from injuries. We lost 0-2 the final period to their professional reserve team; college age girls that are a step away from playing in the premiere league. A couple of them came off our game and suited up for their top team which was playing a boys team next. Even though we lost, we played really well and hung with them most of the time.
It was planned to be back on the bus and then to the hotel by 9 or 10, but due to that accident, it was after midnight. (The reason my blog is late today.) What do you do when you are stuck on the highway with 30 teenagers? Sing, of course! We had sing-a-longs to entertain the bus. From the National Anthem to Queen songs, we sang them all. Graeme even sang his National Anthem (God Save the Queen) for us! That special time would have never happened had we not been stuck, but it will be one of my long-term memories of the trip.
We are having a traveling day to Manchester on Wednesday. We got back to the hotel, packed up everything and slept for a few hours before we got up and had to get on the bus again.
Despite all the travel issues -- it was another great day!
Love,
Delaney
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