Weekend recap - Burr's return

So thank you to Anne for taking last weekend’s recap. I was exhausted after two whole posts, but am now refreshed and ready to go.

Anne and I kicked off Friday night by opening a vintage 2008 screw-cap Shiraz (approx. £2.50 for the bottle from the grocery store). We then met Ed (my fraternity brother) and his work crew for dinner at Buddha Bar on the Victoria Embankment. Very trendy, very hip. Food was decent, atmosphere was good and we didn’t end up leaving until about 1 AM. Of course, by this time, the tube has stopped running, but by our calculation, it is only 5 tube stops away, so we guess that we can walk it back. We did walk past Big Ben and Parliament in the moonlight, which was cool. However, we decided it might be time to grab a cab right as we got to the park holding the all-night “Stop the Tamil Tigers” protest in some darkened corner of Westminster.

Saturday morning we found the grocery store with the one aisle of American food (pack of Fruit Roll-ups was £5.50) and Anne recovered from her hang-over by chewing out the department store sales-clerks who dared ask her for photo ID (admittedly not her finest moment). While Anne prepared veggies for her fondue party (apologies to all the Brits if there is a shortage of broccoli and/or peppers this week), I met up with Stewart Todd (one of my clients from Charlotte who moved to London in 2007) and a couple of his friends to go to the West Ham – Liverpool football match.

West Ham plays in East London, which is by far the roughest section of town either of us have visited since we arrived. It took about an hour for us to get out there. British football matches have the feel of a college football game, except for (a) they sell beer in the stadium and (b) there are sports books on-site. Both made the game more fun; however, our betting outlook grew bleak 79 seconds in when Liverpool scored its first goal. The home side never truly threatened and none of our bets paid out. Liverpool ended up winning 3-0 and I learned some new songs that will not be in our niece’s sing-a-long books. The tube station on the returning trip had a 45 minute wait, so we grabbed a couple more pints and tried to avoid the stares from the tattooed skin-heads that apparently arrived to dominate that particular pub.

We then came back into the city and hit up the casino in Leicester Square. Note to all UK travellers with a desire to play blackjack (Dad), drinks are not free. Also, if you find out drinks are not free and refuse payment on said drinks, you are not encouraged to play cards at said establishment. After a couple of hands, I got back to Knightsbridge in time to grab a Quarter Pounder (my first McD’s experience in the UK) and retired for the night.

Anne can describe the fondue party at another time. As far as I know, people used sticks to dip various foodstuffs into vats of cheese and chocolate. We did learn that if you (Burr) lock the door from the inside and leave the keys in the lock, the person on the outside (Anne) can’t unlock the door. Our whole building learned this lesson when Anne was forced to bang on the door loudly at 1:30 to get me out of my lager-induced slumber.

Sunday was fantastic weather. We woke up late and cruised through Chelsea, stopping for lunch outside at The Big Easy, a BBQ joint with decent American food. We then met the Illifs and other friends at a pub to watch Chelsea FC (geographically the team we should be following) destroy Arsenal (the other major London-based team) 4-1. As pay-back, we then had to go get gelato.

Hope everyone has a good week. Until next time…

Burr