So it’s been a day since I’ve gotten into London. It’s been awesome, and that’s why I haven’t really written. I arrived yesterday morning at 6:20am local time, and took an express train into London. I found my hotel, dropped off my bags and decided to find someplace to kill about 5 hours. I had thought I’d head to Tottenham Court Road and go into one of their massive bookstores I remembered being there from last year, but when I actually got down there, I couldn’t find it.

So instead I headed to the local internet cafe and tried to find the numbers of some friends. I also attempted to unlock my phone so that I could get in touch with a friend or two. But there’s a problem, I bought a UK sim-card [which fits into the back of your phone and tells you what network you use] and put it in my phone. As soon as I turned it on it asked me for the unlock code, I being the dummy tried putting in all 0’s and then 1234567 because I figured that’s the default values. Well I’m a dummy, apparently if you do that it ends up ‘locking’ your phone from actually being unlocked. I know this because I spent $20 trying to get the unlock code for my phone. Eventually I realised I’m fucked and gave up on it, giving my SIM card to my friend so he could use it at least.

A few hours later, and much money spent [mostly on little shit like some food, and a few necessities] I met up with my friend Stephan and his girlfriend Eva. Both of them are diehard Arsenal fans so we were excited to be back in London and attending games. We decided to head over to Islington to pick up our tickets for the games and then so we could hit up the local bars we were meeting others at.

Getting the tickets wasn’t a problem, and there was a plus. Looking at the tickets we were unimaginably close to the pitch. I mean like 4 or 5 rows back. A lot closer than any other sporting event I’ve ever been too.Seeing that made all of us excited, so our next task was to find the rest of our group.

We had heard some were going to be at a pub called The Gunners, however after showing our tickets to gain entrance to the pub we realised that it was a] too fucking packed and b] no one was there. So we decided to ditch that idea and head to a pub called Tbird that was a few blocks away.

Sure enough most of our group was there, but what was also there were immense temperatures. I’m guessing because we were in the basement area and there was no A/C but sweet jesus we were sweating buckets almost as soon as we arrived.

But we couldn’t just leave as soon as we got there, we had to mingle a bit, Stephan’s girlfriend got oogled by some weird guy, thought he may have been reading her scarf, we’re not entirely sure.

After we had a few pints it was time for the game. Now I have to say last year we were spoiled, we got to witness two drubbings, and last night was a continuation of that. The only minor bad thing was that because we were so close to the pitch we weren’t covered by the overhangs and got wet during the first half. But sweet jesus being so close to the pitch was worth it. I told my neighbor, a friendly guy named Will, that gettign pneumonia would be worth it with those seats.

The rest of the night was a blur after witnessing the 3-0 drubbing of Sparta Prague, we hung around for a while, got a fish ‘n chips and then retired to our rooms. But really by that point I was fucking exhausted, I had been up since I left Ft.Lauderdale at noon and I passed out pretty easily.

Today was spent mostly hanging out with Steph and Eva going from interesting pub to interesting pub. All in all something I highly recommend if you can do it.

Tomorrow we have our Highbury tour, and then I’m meeting up with a friend afterward for a bite to eat.

Also I took a shitload of pictures, but dummy-me didn’t bring my camera cable to get them off the camera, and it wouldn’t really matter as there’s no wireless internet in my hotel like I had hoped for.

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