Art, Booze, and Culture... The ABC's of Jolly London Town

So, in a rash of good judgement I agreed to go on a trip with Matty, Dante, and our newest team member, Mr. Andrew Pink, to visit London the first weekend of December.
We flew Ryanair into London Stanstead and took the ridiculously expensive train to Liverpool St. Station. The reason that we decided to visit London was that Pink's grandmother's house was available for the weekend and we could stay for free. I must note that even for people who currently earn euros, a visit to Britain is only affordable with free accommodation. I highly recommend it! So anyway, we took the Underground out to Pink's Grandmother's house in Southwestern London (Chelsea United Country) just beyond the Thames river and parked our stuff. It was there that I learned a few lessons of British culture:
1. Tea is served at all hours of the day... not just during tea time (4pm-ish). In fact, it was standard for us to consume between 5-10 black tea's per day. For those of you counting that woud be equivalent to between 15-20 cups of coffee per day.
2. Heinz baked beans, bacon, HP Brown sauce, and fried eggs are the greatest breakfast of all time--particularly when served with black tea and cooked by Mrs. Pink who uses a 1940's era open-flame gas oven. Imagine if you will, a nice chef's oven...now subtract the nice part... then imagine that these ovens without a lighting function were no longer produced after the 1960s. Got it? Then you can see why she burns toast if she is having a conversation while cooking in it.
3. On British television product placement is still illegal. Interestingly, there is a "The Price is Right" equivalent show. However, since the prizes cannot be name brand, all of the prizes are generic store items and are literally described as, "this is a tea kettle"... moreover, the announcer has to sound excited about it. There is no description of the 5 speed Seeley micro-Dust Buster. It would just be "a hand-held vacuum!"

I warn you, these entries are in alphabetical order (rather than chronological) so I could have a clever mnemonic device in the title...

I. Art
Although each night of this trip seemed to result in a trip to the Local (a bar called GJ's that sits roughly 2 blocks from Pink's Gran's house), the purpose of the trip was not just the advertised "four day drunk". In order to rationalise our trip and the brutal conversion to British Pounds, we decided to visit several museums and points of interest including: The Natural History Museum, The Tate Gallery, The Globe Theater,and the highlight of the trip, The Somerset House. If you have not been to the Somerset House, it is really an incredible gallery and it is well worth the 5GBP cover. Not only because you get to see a wall filled with beautiful impressionists including Manet, Monet, and the dot paintings of Seurat, but also because they are displayed so casually. Literally, you will just walk into a room of this old mansion and there will be four paintings well displayed, and then if you are looking carefully you will see hiding behind the door in the corner, a painting by Manet worth hundreds of thousands of pounds... ridiculous.

II. Booze
Night 1:
So, when we arrived on Thursday morning at about 10am, we got off the underground train and decided to skip the bus and walk to Mrs. Pink's house.Once we got to Mrs. Pink's house, she made us our first of six English Breakfasts we consumed in the four day period. Shortly after she fed us, she took off for the weekend to spend time with some friends, entrusting us with her place over the long weekend. Although we had a near-lockout incident, it fortunately turned out not to be a mistake.
So, I mentioned before that we were in Chelsea United country. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a tour in the stadium, but I picked up a fan scarf and got this sweet pic! Later that night we met up with a friend of Pink's, Anna, who met us at a pub near the stadium called The Slug. Reportedly, Thursday was the night to hang out there as it becomes "Coyote Slugly". After dinner though we decided to move on. We took the Undergound to Covent Garden, but we lost Dante who sprinted off because he was about to pee his pants. All he knew was that we would be at a pub called The Brewhouse near the Covent Garden exit. There we met up with a Stag Party where each member dressed in a fantastic costume (according to Pink, this actually occurs pretty frequently). It was straight out of a Jay Leno skit. Every minute or so a new guy would walk into the bar. First came Shrek. Then came Donald Duck. .Then came the Bavarian in Lederhosen, Followed quickly by the strongest Snow White I have ever laid eyes on... Matty was getting a bit fresh with her, but she didn't seem to mind.

We hadn't found Dante, but it became time to find the next bar. We took about ten paces and saw it... The only Canadian Bar in London. We had to go in. Thirty minutes later, Dante strolls in with a Santa Cap on.

Although Anna had to work the next day, the night went on in celebration of Dante randomly spotting my reflective jacket in the one bar that was showing live Hockey in London. The final push of the evening took us to a club called Tiger Tiger, where apparently, many reality TV stars were hanging out. I will spare you the details, but Dante was clearly the winner of the night! Congrats Dante! We made it home at roughly 5am and made the decision at that time that we were not going to cook breakfast the next morning and instead we would head half a block to a local breakfast establishment... in our states, it was the best choice we have ever madeDon't bother telling me how good I looked--I was there!

There were two other nights where we went out. The first night pretty much set the tone. On the second night, to Pink's chagrin, we started at an Australian Bar but inevitably wound up at the Local. On Sunday, we watched Chelsea United dominate a match against London rivals Arsonal, but barely manage to tie 1-1. Chelsea hit the goal post on 5 separate occasions, Arsonal scored in the 77th minute and Chelsea managed to equalise in the 85th on a wonderstrike by Michael "The Bison" Essien. Needless to say, the fans were relieved and the night was a good one. There truly is no football like English Premiership football, in my humble opinion.

III. Culture
Our trip lasted four days. We used day two to visit the main sights: Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, The Millenium Bridge, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey... you get the picture. Pink was a wonderful tour guide and managed to inject little tidbits of useful information about the sights. One story in particular occurred in the barracks outside of Buckingham palace. Apparently, a friend of Pink's grandfather was in the military in spite of the fact that he was vertically challenged. In the barracks, the primary activites outside of guarding the queen were darts and beer drinking. In order to give him a hard time (in true to British form), his buddies built the pint shelf at a height over 7 feet, just high enough not to reach. Needless to say, for the next few years when he played darts his pint sat on the ground... bad luck. It is strikingly similar to some of the pranks my teammates play on yours truly, since I am the munchkin of the group. (sigh)

On the last morning we woke up at around 4:30am to take a cab to the Liverpool Street Station. From there we took the tram to a packed Stansted Airport and narrowly made it to our flight in spite of the fact that we arrived at the airport at 6:30 for a 7:45am flight. Airport security in England has become insane, and apparently, even the Monday morning pre-dawn flights have been affected. Crazy. But, we all made it home alive and in time to nap before training the following Monday. Be sure to tune in again for a description of Janet's and my trip to Paris, and a much-needed volleyball update. Until then, in the words of Ron Burgundy, "you stay classy, world!"