Day 1 - planes trains subways and automobiles + football

We left Toronto 8pm Friday en route to the UK! Brief stopover in Iceland in the middle of the night which was made longer due to fog conditions in London and we arrived an hour late into Gatwick at noon on Saturday. No time to waste we hopped the Gatwick Express train to London Victoria then hopped in a cab to the hotel near Tower of London.

Room was ready so we checked in, dropped our stuff, and off to find the tube. We had tickets to the 3pm match between Tottenham Hotspurs and Huddersfield at Wembley and no time to waste. The hour delay on the plane really screwed plans.

We figured out the tube map pretty quickly (given previous experience with the Paris subway!) and got to Wembley in about 40 min. We were late, the match was well underway, and the outside of the stadium a ghost town. We found our gate, endured the mandatory pat down, and headed to find our seats. Ghost town outside, pandemonium inside. These people love their football.

We had missed the first goal for the Spurs but saw the second goal. The fans were estatic. One young drunken hooligan a row or two behind took a gleeful swan dive into the seats just below and cracked a seat in two. Then another drunken middle aged fellow then shows up in the space he just vacated and sings at the top of his lungs “I BELIEVE I CAN FLY!!” while flapping like a big drunken bird.

Navigating a sea of 70k fans back to the tube we eventually made it back, found a pub for a quick dinner, and crashed. Felt like we’d been awake for days.

Mark loved his fish n chips with peas and sausage!