Tag: Travel

You’re getting sacked in the morning

Amy OLeave a comment

Although we arrived in London on the Friday before a Saturday match, pretty typical timeline, we had an unusually quiet time before the match. We had selected a hotel we’d never stayed in, the Montcalm East, located in Shoreditch. As with many recent trips, a hotel nicer than our normal budget would allow but that came into our price point for this trip. Very nice hotel. In my top 5.

After checking in, we relaxed a bit and then had lunch at Pizza Union. My husband had to call in for an Italian class, during which I made up for the sleep I failed to get on the plane. Afterward, we walked over to The Artillery Arms for a beer and dinner. The kitchen was closed by then, so it ended up being beer alone. Cute place, a Fuller pub, naturally. We selected snacks from an Aldi along the way back to the hotel to get through the night.

As much sleep as I got in the late afternoon and evening you’d think it would be a struggle to sleep at night. It was not. I slept like a baby. We awoke in the morning and had a delicious breakfast at A Pinch of Salt Cafe.

The match against Nottingham Forest was early, 12:30, so we headed to the Emirates soon thereafter. Spent a bit of time in Arsenal’s merch shop, The Armoury, just checking out the new stuff. There is always new stuff.

My seat was in the North Bank, really my favorite place to watch a match. You can see play developing and the crowd is almost always quite enthusiastic. This was true on Saturday as well. It’s a pleasure sitting near supporters who are–well–supportive. The North Bank also is prime positioning for offensive actions by Arsenal in the second half. Nothing more fun than having a goal scored right in front of you.

Arteta changed up the lineup in a somewhat surprising way, bringing new guy Eberechi Eze into the left wing and using Mikel Merino instead of Declan Rice. In midfield with Merino was Martin Odegaard, back in the lineup after his shoulder injury during the Leeds match, and other new guy, Martin Zubimendi. The other starters were a bit less surprising given our poor injury record this season.

I would think the changes Arteta made would not have been anticipated by a rival manager. However, in this case, the rival manager didn’t have much time to anticipate anything at all, having been hired only the week before the match. It was our old nemesis from Tottenham, Ange Postecoglou. Tottenham sacked him at the end of last season. Even though he did manage to win the Europa League, the rest of the season was pretty bad for Tottenham. Nottingham Forest only recently fired their manager, Nuno Espírito Santo. He’d been a good manager for Nottingham Forest but seemed to have been done in mostly by office politics. I’d rather face an Ange team than a Santo team, but was a bit nervous about the possibility of the dreaded new manager bounce that can occur sometimes.

Needn’t have worried because Arsenal were excellent right from the start. We dominated possession and looked really, really dangerous. And naturally, because Ange is (to us) Tottenham, we supporters were up for it also. Loud, loud, loud, and quite obnoxious.

Sadly, after losing Martin Odegaard to a shoulder injury in the first 10 minutes in the Leeds match, we lost him again early in this match after he fell awkwardly on the same shoulder. Ethan Nwaneri again came on and deputized him well.

Martin Zubimendi joined up with Arsenal over the summer from Spanish team Real Sociedad. Technically, his deal was agreed across all parties in March, but for financial reasons Real Sociedad wanted it to go through in their fiscal year starting in July. His move to Arsenal was kept relatively quiet although we believed he was likely coming into the team. We were excited—he looked like a great replacement for Thomas Partey, who was to be out of contract over the summer. But the longer the announcement was delayed, and with Arsenal’s surprising move to briefly pursue Partey at the end of last season, the more I worried Zubimendi might not come at all. But you know how it is. Once it’s finally done you rewrite history in your head. Of course he was always coming to Arsenal.

As I recall it, he was the first signing of a busy July for Arsenal. Shortly after Martin Zubimendi was signed, so was Christian Norgaard and Noni Madueke. And it seemed we would also bring in Viktor Gyokeres. Gyokeres was the most exciting signing for fans because he’s a striker, and we have sooooo needed one. Plus, he was lighting up the Portuguese league with goal after goal. When Gyokeres was announced as an Arsenal player, sales of shirts with his name on the back broke the existing record for shirt sales at Arsenal. So with all the other excitement, while I was happy Zubimendi signed, it went a bit under my radar as an important development.

In the pre season and first two matches, Martin Zubimendi was quietly excellent as a player. Mikel Arteta put him right into the lineup and he was solid defensively and reasonably creative offensively. Easy to take for granted. And I think we did just that.

In the match against Nottingham Forest, Martin Zubimendi’s excellence went loud. Very, very loud.

Despite Arsenal’s superiority, it took a while to deliver a goal. It finally came about 30 minutes in in the aftermath of a corner kick. Madueke put up a nice one, but it was headed by a Nottingham Forest defender. It was not a bad clearance–beyond the penalty area–except for one big problem. Apparently Martin Zubimendi is able to volley such a ball into the net from that distance. And he did exactly that. A gorgeous goal. Every time they showed it in the stadium—and they showed it on the giant stadium screens more times than usual—every fan watching it again said “Whoa!” in unison when he again struck that ball and it again flew into the net. It might have grazed a defender on the way in, but no way was any goalkeeper keeping that ball out.

1 – 0. Cue chants of “1 nil to the Arsenal.”

At halftime I stepped away for the typical bathroom break and an atypical wait in the concessions line for a cup of tea. Although you can’t bring beer into the stadium, you can bring tea. I heard the announcer say the teams were back on the field and I carried my newly-acquired tea back to my seat in the North bank.

It was a good thing I did because, just as Viktor Gyokeres scored a quick goal right after halftime in the Leeds match, in this match Eberechi Eze received a perfect through ball from Ricardo Califiori within minutes of the restart. He put up a perfect cross for Gyokeres who rammed it in the back of the net from close range. Like the Leeds match, a lot of people who didn’t make their way back into the stadium missed seeing that live. 2 – 0.

At this point, the chanting in the stadium became bifurcated.

Chant 1: the Victor Gyokeres chant:

He comes from Sweden, the girls are really nice
He dumped his girlfriend to play in red and white
He’s scoring goals with a cannon on his chest
His name is Victor, Victor Gyokeres

(I’ll spare you the gratuitous “De de de”s.)

Chant 2: abuse of Nottingham Forest’s new manager, Ange Postecoglou. No need to update the chant Arsenal fans created for Tottenham when he was the manager there, the lyrics still work. It’s too rude for me to repeat here and goes after not only the manager but also the team. I would suspect the Nottingham Forest players have ever felt quite so reviled at the Emirates. Just caught in the bad blood of an old relationship.

The third Arsenal goal came when Arsenal won a free kick for a foul. Arsenal worked it in and Leandro Trossard, who had come on as a sub, put up a nice looping cross toward the goal. Martin Zubimendi, who I don’t perceive as a particularly tall guy, met it with his head and into the back of the net.

With the requisite chants for Zubimendi completed by the Arsenal fans, they turned their attention to hapless manager Ange Postecoglou on his inaugural match with Nottingham Forest: 

Sacked in the morning
You're getting sacked in the morning

Despite the fact that Zubimendi scored 2 goals and Viktor Gyokeres scored only 1, at the ending whistle the stadium DJ cued up Salt-n-Pepa’s Push it, the musical inspiration for the Gyokeres chant. We note that the DJ can only work with the materials he’s been given. A player is endowed with a chant by the supporters. It may be based on commercially-created music or some traditional chant or some new invention. Much like your family, you can’t chose your own chant. Zubimendi’s chant isn’t based on commercially-available music.

He’ll just have to be happy with being named man of the match. That, and our love and admiration.

Friends in low/high places

Amy O1 Comment

We stayed this time at the Andaz London, a very nice hotel on Liverpool street that briefly came into our price point during this trip. On only one other occasion while visiting London was breakfast included in the price of the room, but the Andaz’s breakfast had such interesting and extensive options I feel like I want to pay more attention to this feature when selecting hotels in the future. Although it’s fun finding new places to eat for each meal, it was very relaxing to start the day in our own restaurant and fun to try the many different options they offered. For example, salad. Charcuterie. Also the usual stuff–toast, croissants, waffles, eggs, smoothies, fruit, yogurt.

I’ve often felt that my favorite, most meaningful activities in London have been the cheapest and this trip also had those cheap–and free–moments. Although it’s been our rule not to go to a theatre production on the night we arrive in London, lately it’s more like a guideline. As soon as we booked our flights we checked in on what was playing at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre since the outdoor theatre is only in use during seasons in which temperate weather can be expected. In the course of the football season that’s usually only possible early on. There was only one performance that would work for us, the one on the Friday night we arrived in London, which turned out to be a late arrival after significant flight delays.

The reason for the rule not to attend theatre is simple: we are usually seriously jet-lagged and can’t keep our eyes open after the lights come down. I felt we’d be able to stay alert and enjoy this play for two reasons. First, The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy, albeit one I knew very little about (with apologies to instructors of the two semesters of Shakespeare I took in college). Second, we bought tickets as groundings, the peasants that traditionally stood in front of the stage during a play in Shakespeare’s time (in contrast to the wealthy, who sat in seats above the groundlings). I felt that we’d be forced to stay awake while standing, but if we became too tired to continue we could always depart at intermission. Tickets for groundlings are about $10 each so the sunk costs are reasonable enough to walk away from.

My husband, who clearly paid more attention in his Shakespeare’s classes, recalled that this play had been written by Shakespeare over just a few days at the insistence of Queen Elizabeth. As a result, possibly not his best work. One of few plays set in what would have been Shakespeare’s current day, it’s the story of a man who seeks to seduce the wives of two gentlemen. The wives compare notes and conspire to seek revenge against him. It’s kind of a weird play, but mostly light and enjoyable. Shakespeare often played to the groundlings in his plays and this is expertly done at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Groundlings find themselves in the play and it makes the experience both authentic and a lot of fun. We’ve been to a few plays at the theatre and they are always excellent and well-acted. This one was no exception. We were tired but made it through the performance and felt that we got tremendous entertainment value for a very reasonable price. I never intend to sit in a seat at the Globe.

Our second peasant experience of the weekend was trekking over to the Palladium Theatre and seeing Rachel Zegler sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from the balcony during the matinee performance of Evita. She literally sings to a gathered crowd below the theatre balcony while, for paying customers inside the theatre, they stream live video of her doing this. When we arrived about an hour before the scene would occur there were already thousands gathered on Argyll Street. While we were waiting, the silly thing that kept coming to my mind was the old, comical sketch about Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University, where he advocates for a college experience where he’ll teach you in five minutes only the things you’ll remember five years after you graduate. I know the outline of what happens in Evita, but literally the only song I’ve ever heard of in a musical of dozens of songs is “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” To be able to spend $0 hearing Rachel Zegler sing this song beautifully in 5 minutes in this amazing setting instead of watching the whole musical for $600+ is pretty great. I wasn’t prepared for how moving it would be. The video I linked above is not my video or from the day we were present, but it gives you an idea of the experience. I really wanted to be in the moment (and I was).

Although my favorite things to do in London are almost always the cheapest things, we were in London, so we also did some fancy things. Had a perfect glass of wine in historic Gordon’s Wine Bar on a day so beautiful the ubiquitous line outside was for the garden instead of the wine cave. (We waited for the garden.) Had a delicious Sunday Roast at a pub chain we hadn’t tried before, Blacklock.

We also attended the BBC Proms 2025 piano performance of Bach’s “The Art of Fugue” played by Andras Schiff at the Royal Albert Hall. Many years ago we toured this facility and I had always hoped we’d be able to attend a performance there. It gave me chills to be part of a crowd walking blocks together toward the concert hall to hear music and then, afterward to be walking away together, everyone chatting about the performance. We were seated in a stall to the left of the piano, selected so that we could see Andras Schiff’s hands while he performed. Unfortunately, the positioning of the piano only allowed us to see his back. Best laid plans…. There was a “groundling” equivalent available for the concert, but I was happy not to be standing during this performance. A lady in the first row of the “groundlings” actually seemed to lose consciousness and collapse. For a passed-out person she was quite well-behaved. She seemed to ultimately get back on her feet, the pianist seemingly never knowing that it had happened and continuing on. The acoustics in the hall were great and the music was beautiful. Schiff has claimed that he’s waited 70 years to be ready to play this piece, likened to Mount Everest. I’m a lazy person, but I don’t mind watching someone else scale Mount Everest.

On Sunday before Roast, we visited the Barbican’s “Feel the Sound” immersive exhibit. The exhibit was focused on how we experience sound, not just with our ears but with our whole bodies, and how sound can be created, including with pulses inside our bodies. Super interesting and interactive exhibit.

Each time we go to London I wonder how we’ll continue to find interesting and fun things to do and experience.

It’s a baseless worry. While Arsenal can sometimes be disappointing, London never is.

A hopeful fool and her money are soon parted

Amy O3 Comments

After a fairly barren soccer summer the Premier League is–at last–back in session. I had plenty of time on my hands, having retired from working at the end of May. I am a person of very few hobbies and one for whom most of my social contacts were established through my work. Therefore, it’s been somewhat of an uphill battle keeping busy, let alone Finding Purpose. I did a lot of gardening, helped some friends and family members with financial questions, and experimented with volunteering. Got plenty of exercise, more than I ever did while working. (I daresay that if I had exercised as much while I was still working maybe I could have tolerated Work BS a few years longer. That’s a theory I don’t feel compelled to test.) Still, I would say there has been a lot of floundering and too much doom scrolling. It’s such a terrible time for scrolling, so hard to keep it mindless and not take in all the nonsense/doom. In short, I have work to do to have a retirement I feel good about.

I couldn’t force myself to watch the Club World Cup–such an abomination–but I did invest in watching almost all of the Women’s Euros. Delightful and worthwhile in every way. I didn’t gravitate to any one team as I usually do while watching international competition, just enjoyed watching women play great soccer, have high highs and low lows. Kudos to Team England for winning the competition. They ground out result after result, never looking comfortable until it was all over.

A lot of my doom scrolling of the summer was focused on Premier League transfer rumors, especially for Arsenal. I see ESPN and other media outlets grading Arsenal’s transfer window as a B-. First, let’s acknowledge the ridiculousness of grading transfer business. Then let’s take exception to the grade Arsenal got. I can’t remember a better overall transfer window in my time as a fan. We’ve brought in six players that would make it possible to replace a future injured first-choice player with a solid second choice option, to successfully rotate to prevent those injuries, to be able to bring different energy from the bench when needed in a match, and to just make us better in key positions.

We successfully brought in a new dedicated striker, Viktor Gyokeres, where both previously available options had been repurposed under desperate circumstances from other positions. In my opinion, both of those options worked out pretty well. But having a guy who has a history of scoring a goal on average in every match is pretty exciting. We also brought in Martin Zubimendi to replace the position formerly filled by Thomas Partey, whose contract expired at the end of the season. Against its better judgment, Arsenal did try to re-sign him, more as a replacement of Jorginho, a solid second-choice defensive midfielder. Partey is an excellent defensive midfielder but has legal–and possibly moral–baggage that we’d have been smart to be freed of. Not by Arsenal intention but because Partey wanted higher pay than Arsenal could stomach, it seems we have been freed.

Zubimendi has been very exciting to watch in the pre-season and will make a great difference immediately. How long it will take Gyokeres to kick in as a valuable option is an open question. He came from a weaker and less physical league and has a style that isn’t exactly a fit for Arsenal. I back him and Arsenal to figure out how to get the best of him.

As I write, Arsenal appear to be in final stages of signing Eberechi Eze from Crystal Palace, out from under the noses of our fiercest rivals, Tottenham. He’s a magnificent creative midfielder but where he fits in Arsenal with its very solid existing midfield is a bit mysterious. I’m going to trust the process, here.

The primary wild card is that other teams were unfairly able to strengthen over the summer as well. The future is contingent on alchemy, ours vs. theirs.

We’ve already played one game in the season, an away fixture at Manchester United on Sunday. That is always a tough game. No matter how badly Manchester United are they always seem to have a good day when we play them at their home. Last Sunday Manchester United played pretty well and Arsenal played pretty shit, but Arsenal still won, 0 – 1. The goal came via a header from an unmarked Riccardo Calafiori on a corner kick routine that has produced more than its fair share of whining. In every corner kick situation in the Premier League there is grappling in the box by both teams, and this kick was no exception. I don’t know how VAR could rule a possible foul by an Arsenal player as more important than fouls on 3 Arsenal players in the same moment, and this time they did not. The goal stood and Manchester United couldn’t break us down for the 80+ minutes after the goal. We’ll take the win.

On that backdrop, my husband and I managed to score tickets to the Leeds match on Saturday. You know the drill, we have to enter the ballot and, once we inevitably lose, that allows us to use the exchange to try to find tickets being sold by others. This is the home opener (not sure they call it that in soccer!) so it was a very popular ticket and arguably hard to get. You know why–because we are going to win the league this year. Everyone wants to say they were at the first game.

For me it was quite easy to get. I was chatting with my mother on the phone and the conversation was nearing its end when she started to tell me a story I had heard before. I am an old person so I appreciate being able to repeat my stories again and again to any person not bold enough to stop me from re-telling them. Therefore, I allowed her to tell the story without interruption while concluding that it might be acceptable to multi-task a bit on the exchange. A ticket came up on my first click. It’s Club (you know I don’t love Club) but the price was decent, I bought it, and a trip could be planned.

Airfare prices are pretty great right now and we were able to book a hotel that’s never before been in our price point. That said, going to London for Arsenal matches is a pretty expensive hobby for someone with no income. Well worth it if you know for a fact you are going to win the league that year. I do know it. You know I know it.

Luckily, while a hopeful fool and her money are soon parted, it takes a whole season to part her from all her money. Let’s rejoice in the fun to be had along the way.

Partey like it’s your birthday

Amy O2 Comments

It actually was my birthday on Saturday, a big one. Lately, they are all big ones. I rarely make a big deal of my birthday because, let’s face it, after a while a person has had a lot of birthdays. However, for this one I treated it like a my 8-year old self would have: I am the center of the universe and no indulgence is too much. We had a family party on the day before we left for London, for which my sister made a beautiful and delicious cake and my kids came home and spent the night.

I treated the whole week in London like carbs don’t count. At all. If I wanted a blueberry brioche for breakfast at Gail’s, which I did almost every day–except the days when I wanted a scone with clotted cream–well, I had it. Yeah, I suspect it might be frowned on to have a scone for breakfast, just like in Italy it’s frowned on to have cappuccino in the afternoon. I have been corrected in Italy for my errors, but no one in England has ever corrected me to my face. I’ve already described the cream beignet I had from Fortitude Bakehouse. Plus I had a big, ol’ Guinness whenever I felt like it. Which was just about every day.

And because it was going to be my birthday on game day and–Champions League excepted–it is easy now to get tickets to Arsenal matches if you’ve put in a ballot, I was excruciatingly picky about where I would sit. No club seats–boring! And why sit in the rafters? I decided I needed to be in the corner or behind the goal in the North Bank, within 6 rows of the field. So that if there was a celebration, I would be right there. I turned up my nose at many a ticket I had in my hand until one finally met all my criteria. My husband held out longer but worked less hard than I did. I ended up finding him a ticket that was even better than mine. His was on the side closest to the substitutes and Mikel Arteta and row 2. When the players would get up to warm up, he’d be right there. Despite how good these tickets sound, these were some of the cheapest seats in the house. They are seats for someone who wants to be in the thick of things. In the thick of things you experience a lot, but you might not see everything.

The day had an inauspicious start. I was awoken at 4 a.m. by someone who was trying to open our hotel room door. When ours would not open, they moved to the one next door and tried that. Then back to our door. This is not really a hotel with a reception area you can call, and I really couldn’t think what to do about this. Meanwhile my husband was sleeping soundly. I let him. Finally, the activities of the person caused an alarm to go off, which did wake up my husband. A bit later we heard the police out in the hallway. What we ultimately heard about what happened is that a guest in the hotel had been “overserved” that night and was having trouble figuring out where her room was. And, using drunk logic, kept trying. After all that excitement, neither my husband nor I could sleep so we started the day.

After the requisite visit to Gail’s which was open quite early in the morning, we found a self-guided walking tour we wanted to do in the neighborhood using Footways. We did the walk from Farringdon station to Angel. There were some cool things to see. London’s only public statute of Henry VIII. He was looking pretty fit at that point. St. John’s Gate. Many lovely gardens, mostly associated with churches. Regent’s Canal. It was meant to be a 26-minute walk. We got lost a lot and it took quite a bit longer.

We had scheduled a tour of the ruins of Billingsgate Roman House and Baths for later in the morning. That was pretty cool. Romans occupied parts of what became London starting in the first century AD. They built homes that ultimately were built on by others, layers and layers of people building over centuries. As people now renovate in London, they sometimes find remnants of Roman life under the surface. This particular archeological find of parts of a Roman home with a Roman bath is under a nondescript office building. We took a guided tour of the site given by City Guides. The bath is largely intact and you can easily visualize the three rooms. So clean and perfect it almost looked fake. I enjoyed the tour very much.

But we were flagging so we took the liberty of having what for me was a fish and chips break at The Hydrant, right next to the monument commemorating the Great Fire of London. We were seating facing the window where the people watching was fabulous. Everyone stopping to take selfies in front of the Monument. The fish and chips were also quite yummy.

From there we decided to take an Uber boat from Embankment to Putney. It was a glorious, sunny and warm day to be on the River. And the scenery was great, until the gentle rocking got the better of me and put me into a deep sleep. I woke up not long before we arrived at Putney Pier. Putney Pier is pretty close to Fulham’s stadium, Craven Cottage. You can see the edge of one of the stands from the Putney stop. From there we walked over to the Tube station and returned to Farringdon.

It was just about time to head over near the Emirates. We were early enough that we decided to visit an Arsenal-friendly pub called The Bank of Friendship. It’s not really a Fuller’s pub but it does have London Pride, my husband’s weakness. The pub was packed with Arsenal fans. We’ve been to this pub before but never before have seen the very nice beer garden. As I walked into the garden I was invited to sit with a group of Arsenal fans. They were a mix of ages, all guys, and I mistook them for a family. But it turned out they were connected by loose friendship and Arsenal kinship to one of the guys. Some of them had only met that day. About that time the lineup for the Arsenal match had come out and we commiserated together about that. As expected, Arteta planned to put out an unusual team, including Thomas Partey at right back, not his best spot. Martin Odegaard, Mikel Merino, and Bukayo Saka were all listed as substitutes. Ben White, only recently returned from a lengthy injury was no where. With our new friends we also had the requisite conversation about Donald Trump.

Our new acquaintances kept saying they needed to leave and then kept going to buy one more beer. I don’t know where they put it all.

At last my husband and I said our goodbyes and walked over to The Emirates. I loved my seats. Although the announcer makes an announcement at the beginning of each match asking fans not to engage in “persistent standing” these were seats for which there is only persistent standing. It’s silly to expect otherwise. People (the ones who remain in their seats and do not go to get beer) do sit down at half-time. I’m pretty short and the rise from one row to the next is not much behind the goal so I had to do a lot of craning and shifting to see stuff over people’s heads. The people around me were spirited and good-natured and it was just fun.

The atmosphere was good, but there was no doubt that everyone in the stadium knew this Premier League match was not the most important focus. And for sure the atmosphere was NOT what it had been for the Real Madrid match on Tuesday. Our position in the Premier League is what it is. We can’t catch Liverpool, not really, and there’s probably very little chance we won’t finish in position to be in the Champion’s League next year. And we do have to be careful. We’ve battled injuries all season, bad ones with long recoveries. We couldn’t afford to lose focus on the upcoming match against Real Madrid at the fearsome stadium Bernabeu. As a fanbase we were for sure hung over from the unbelievable match and unbelievable spirt of the encounter earlier this week with Real Madrid.

I heard a lot of complaining in the press after the Brentford match about how boring it was. I did not encounter it that way. I thought Arsenal played well, and I felt fine about how things were going. Arsenal created plenty of chances to score. Brentford didn’t didn’t accomplish much.

In the second half, Arsenal finally did score. A pretty unusual Arsenal goal, where David Raya created a counterattack by rolling the ball to Declan Rice following a corner kick. Rice came away like a steam engine with three Arsenal players able to spring free and Brentford struggling to get defenders back. Rice passed it to Thomas Partey who rocketed it into the goal right in front of me. And he did celebrate pretty close to me. Arteta made some changes at that point to give some of his stars time to run a bit.

Unfortunately, Brentford, who didn’t do much on the night, did enough to score a goal. I didn’t see much of it live, but after reviewing highlights online afterward, have to say it was a good, opportunistic goal.

Arsenal continued to work hard after that. Our defensive midfielder for the night, Jorginho, who was a starter tonight to give some other folks breathing room, had a serious injury and had to leave the field. Arteta had made all his subs and we have to play about 10 minutes a man down.

We still looked dangerous and it still looked like we could maybe pull off another goal.

We could not. The match ended 1-1. Considering everything, it was good enough.

After the match, my husband showed me the pictures he took from his seat. They were unbelievably good and he loved seeing the details up close, but he said the people around him were very hard to deal with. Everyone was so negative, complaining about very decision Arteta made, every decision the players made. He said Arteta didn’t seem happy all night. It was funny how our experiences were so different just because of people’s attitudes.

It’s been a weird season. We have such a good team but had so much bad luck. Still, we sit in second place, albeit FAR behind Liverpool. We’re still alive in the Champions League, heading to the semifinals against PSG as of this past Wednesday, when we did beat Madrid in their own stadium in addition to beating them at ours. We’ll make a bid for tickets, but if we don’t get them officially, we won’t return to London. I think we learned our lesson this time.

We’re a team on the verge of something awesome, I just know it. But you know me. I always “know” it. And when will the “awesome” happen? No clue.

In my lifetime, if I’m lucky enough to have many more birthdays.

A little work, a little play

Amy OLeave a comment

So we were back in London for the week and, as has been the case the last few times, I worked from London. But this time is different because I am retiring at the end of May. My replacement has already been hired and she is a good one, rapidly coming up to speed. So while I did work every day and almost put in a full week, it was also pretty chill. Every day I got up and put in an hour or two of work and then my husband and I had a planned activity. We’d enjoy that, have lunch, and then I’d go back to our room to work until dinner time.

There are a series of “Pub & rooms” in London where a small “hotel” stands above a historic pub. We’ve stayed at one before, The Bull and Hide. This time we tried The One Tun Pub & Rooms near Farringdon station, a pub supposedly patronized, in some earlier version, by Charles Dickens. From the outside, the pub didn’t seem like much and it wasn’t as thronged as other pubs nearby. When I finally saw the inside of it on–I’m ashamed to admit–the last day, it was so awesome. Cozy, fun, with delicious Asian food.

The rooms had a separate door, up some steep stairs. There were 3-4 rooms on our floor and more up a level. Cute and large room with lots of character. We were just above the pub. About 3:30 each day the noise from people gathering both downstairs and in the street outside and music playing would ramp up until about 9 p.m. By 10:30 each night it was pretty quiet.

The location was great. Farringdon station was a block away, so it was easy to get where we wanted to go, and there was a good selection of coffee shops, restaurants, and pubs nearby. This was the first time we visited London where it was more convenient to take the Elizabeth line than the Piccadilly line to and from the airport. Have to say the Elizabeth line is an easy way to travel. New, spacious cars, and there was never a time when we had to schlep our stuff up a bunch of stairs. Hotel excepting. I only packed a carry-on, but a week’s worth of crammed-in stuff is still kind of heavy for a near-retiree.

In the daily “fun hour” we managed the following attractions:

Siena: The rise of painting 1300-1350 at the National Gallery. This exhibit explores the art movement in 14th century Siena, dominated by Christian themes, drama, bright colors, and metallic finishes. That is a big oversimplification from an unsophisticated viewer of art. We sprung for the added mobile audio tour, which I highly recommend especially if you are an occasional art dabbler like me. It helped set the stage and provide details around what to look for, what was unique about the pieces it focused on. We’ve visited the National Gallery before and it has some great works with free admission. We only did a speed walk through the gallery on our way out of the exhibit this time. It felt a bit sinful to walk past Van Gogh’s sunflowers with only a sidelong glance.

War and the mind exhibit at the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War museum is a great little attraction and it often has interesting exhibits. They are always thoughtfully done and thought-provoking, and this exhibit on “War and the Mind” was no exception. It covered how people become motivated to start and accept (even support) war, the impact war has on the psyche (and the reverse), both for soldiers and civilians, and then how we are motivated to bring war to conclusion, and think about it in the aftermath. There have been no wars on the mainland of America in the lifetime of anyone I’ve known, but things are different in England. Although the exhibit was not just about impact of war on England, the rich examples and artifacts available particularly from the second World War drew you in, made you think about things at a different level than you might normally. Than I might normally. Excellent exhibit, and I highly recommend it.

Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots at Serpentine Gallery. The Serpentine gallery is located in the Kensington gardens. The day we went was sunny and springlike and the walk over to the Serpentine gallery was peaceful. Every dog in London seemed to be out for a happy romp among colorful flowers.

It was the perfect precursor to the Penone exhibit focused on the relationship between humans and nature. There were cool installations of fabricated trees just outside the gallery which we enjoyed until the gallery opened. The exhibit inside the gallery was also awesome. I might be guilty of overusing the word peaceful, but that is what I felt while seeing Penone’s works. My favorite exhibit was in a room in which the installation included sections of encased laurel leaves from floor to ceiling. There were also fabricated tree stumps that were probably the main point of the exhibit and they were lovely, but the smell of the Laurel leaves and their appearance, well, it was amazing.

Shopping at Harrods’ food halls. No matter how long you’ve read this blog, never have you ever heard me talking about shopping in London other than at The Emirates. I hate shopping, hate to be in stores. In this case, I took a special trip over to Harrod’s because I’d long heard about the food halls and I was hoping for some Easter candy inspiration. (My husband was on a loftier and more diverse quest elsewhere to London Wetlands, the 24-hour Pianothon at Liverpool Street station, and Traces of Belsen exhibit at Wiener Holocaust Library. Maybe I can convince him to tell us about it here.) The Tube station is right next to Harrod’s and it took some strolling through the departments before I located the Food Halls at the back of the building. If I felt out of place among expensive purses, shoes, scarves, and impeccably-dressed sales people, I clearly was not the only one. Not one person I saw in the store probably had any business shopping there. Anyway, the Food Halls were a special-occasion exception. I visited the room with chocolate, the one with cheeses and meats, and the one with teas, jams, etc. Every thing was so beautiful it was an experience just to look. I ended up buying some chocolate and tea.

Cream beignets at Fortitude Bakehouse. My niece long ago found out about Fortitude bakehouse online and every time for the past year it’s been on my list to get there. This is a bakery that has a famous cream beignet. I understand that people line up for them for hours. They are ready at 11 a.m. and are available until they sell out each day. But somehow I’ve never managed to get there. I made a mental note on my way from Harrod’s that I had to change trains at the station closest to Fortitude, Russell Square. The bakery is only about a block away from the train station. It was my lucky day because I arrived at about 11:30 to find a bunch of people sitting outside the bakery gorging on cream beignets and other yummy- looking pastries. And only a few people in line ahead of me. It appears they make one flavor each day. On the day I was there it was was pistachio and rose, something like that. What I have to say about the hype about the beignets is that it is simply not enough. Flaky, fried dough dipped in granulated sugar, split and coated with jam, then filled with thick, delicious whipped cream, and glazed on top, in this case with pistachio glaze and nuts. One cream beignet was all I could manage for lunch that day. That, and enough tea to wash it down. It occurs to me that I wrote significantly more about cream beignets than about any other activity. This is not an error.

Dear England at the National Theatre. We had intended to attend the play, Three Sisters at Shakespeare’s Globe, but on the day it was supposed to play we received a notice that they had to cancel that evening’s production. We scrambled and found a very different alternative, Dear England, written by James Graham. The play covers the foibles and fortunes (mainly misfortunes) of the real England national soccer team during England’s history and especially Gareth Southgate’s tenure as National Team manager. It’s named after an actual letter that Gareth Southgate wrote during the Covid era before England’s participation in the Euros, the tournament held for only European national teams. How to characterize the real letter? It’s a reflection on the importance of football to the English as well as sort of a plea to take it easy on the very real people who play for the team. The staging was wonderful, the play was interesting, and the characters both lovable and laughable. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The only nit was the poor football technique of the actors. But considering how much of the play focused on England’s misfortunes with penalty kicks, maybe that was intentional?

We went to the play on a beautiful warm night and were able to enjoy lovely scenes along the Thames on our walk back home to the One Tun.

You get what you need

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Declan Rice was preparing to take a long free kick following a foul on Bukayo Saka in front of Real Madrid’s goal when a fan near me asked derisively, “How long has it been since he scored from a free kick?” It was an easy question. As good as Arsenal were scoring on corner kicks earlier this season, I can’t remember a free kick ending in anything except disappointment in recent years. And at 0-0 with only about 30 minutes remaining in the second half, I didn’t have my hopes up.

What happened next seemed like a miracle. Rice hit the ball, it swerved around the wall of Real Madrid players and into the net with one of the best goal keepers in the world, Thibaut Courtois, at full 6′ 7″ stretch, unable to reach it. We were thrilled, and relieved. Arsenal had looked good all match but it still had seemed conceivable up to that point that the match would end at 0-0 and we’d have to meet Real Madrid on their home turf next week with the wind in our faces.

We learned after the match Declan Rice had never scored such a goal.

As you know if you are a regular reader (I see you, fam), I only write while I’m in London. There are two home Arsenal matches this week and although we had tickets for neither when we scheduled our trip we felt that our best chance of scoring tickets for both was to be in London. We were VERY confident we’d be able to get tickets for the Brentford match over the weekend and significantly less confident about getting tickets for the Champions League match against Real Madrid on Tuesday. But still, a little confident.

As small our confidence was, it can now be classified as overconfidence. I must have clicked more than a thousand times for tickets the last week alone. Maybe a thousand in the several weeks before that. Nothing. On the day of the match we hedged our bets by reserving a space at a pub where we could watch the match on TV, hoping fervently we’d be able to cancel it in the end. That did not come to pass. We found ourselves watching from The Hope with other fans who also could not manage to get tickets.

About 10 minutes after Declan Rice scored that beautiful goal, Arsenal found itself again with a long free kick, again following a foul on Bukayo Saka. Declan Rice again teed it up and stroked it through the hole in the stretch of the wall created by Arsenal shirts parting like the red sea. Real Madrid keeper Courtois again stretched across his goal, missing the ball as it struck the top corner of the net.

Having never scored even one such goal, Declan Rice scored two in one night.

I’ve never experienced a celebration anywhere like what happened at The Hope. The goal was so unexpected, maybe even more unexpected than the first goal. There was no “Yeah!” or jumping around or cheering. Everyone just laughed.

We waited only a few minutes more before youngster Myles Lewis-Skelly put a cross in toward our makeshift striker Mikel Merino. There was nothing easy about the shot he had to make but he made it beautiful. In another time and place it would have been the best goal we’d seen in ages.

We ended up beating last year’s Champions League winners 3-0. To prove that there is no team good enough not to be trash-talked while also trashing our fiercest rivals, through the TV we could hear the Arsenal fans singing, “Are you Tottenham? Are you Tottenham? Are you Tottenham in disguise?”

It was hard not to be at The Emirates. The place seemed to be rocking all match and for good reason. We tried to console ourselves that it was just a short walk to our hotel and wasn’t it nice that we didn’t have to wait in a crowd to get on the Tube? But the reality was harder to take. Probably the most exciting match of the season. We were so close, but so far away.

And it makes the away match next week in Madrid even more important to give best efforts to. The match over the weekend against Brentford for which we do now have tickets is likely to be one for which Mikel Arteta keeps our best players on ice. We must take as few chances as possible for additional injuries.

In the end we accept all of it, from a glorious win we could not be present for, to a possibly tedious loss or tie in the Premier League at home over the weekend. If next week’s match against Real Madrid ends the way we want, I lean on brother Mick. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you might find you get what you need.

When you freely dish it out

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It’s been quite a long time since we attended the West Ham match, so let’s dive in.

It was a sunny, nice day to be at the Emirates. Given the previously-referenced Fuller pub crawl, neither my husband nor I were up for a beer upon arriving. We did not arrive especially early and went right to our seats. Our seats were in the Clock End again, pretty typical for a successful ballot.

This time we were as close as we’d ever been to the Away section, unsurprisingly, West Ham this week. And as we know, our job is to drown them out. In this case, they had a lot to chant about having lost Declan Rice to us a few years ago. They are still bitter about it. We acquired him for £100 million, a sum that should have set them up for buying some good players. That hasn’t really happened for them. And, as of today, they are 16th in a league of 20 teams.

Should have been an easy match.

Last season, Rice was so good, £100 million seemed like a complete steal. This season, he’s struggled more. The whole team has struggled more, in large part because it’s been impossible to field our best team, of which Rice is normally an important inclusion. There have been so many injuries in the team this season, I would have told you he is one of few that has not had any. Upon review of that contention, I am reminded that he broke a toe in November and was briefly out of the lineup.

Because of the injuries, our manager Mikel Arteta has had to try out a bunch of stuff, including, in the match prior to this one, against Leicester City, starting Raheem Sterling. Raheem Sterling was formerly one of the top players in the Premier League. He started at Liverpool and was sold to Manchester City. After a lot of early success he found himself on the bench. That’s not a sin at Manchester City. The guys on the bench are better than the starters at most other clubs. Then he was sold to Chelsea, right about the time Chelsea started buying everyone. Chelsea bought some good players but couldn’t field a team that was capable of succeeding for quite some time. When they finally sorted out their best 11, Raheem Sterling again did not make the cut. He was loaned to Arsenal at the beginning of the season.

At the beginning of the season, that seemed like good business from Arsenal. Bukayo Saka is never injured, so having Raheem Sterling available in the off-chance Saka was injured seemed good enough. Over the period Sterling’s been at Arsenal, he’s pretty much only come off the bench to rest others. It’s been clear that he is no longer capable of what he once was.

Well, guess what? Bukayo Saka was injured. He tore his hamstring in December, bad enough to require surgery. That was followed by injuries to Gabriel Jesus (ACL tear and surgery) in January, Gabriel Martinelli (hamstring strain) in February, and Kai Havertz (torn hamstring and surgery) in February. Pretty much our entire preferred starting line-up up top and parts of our next most-preferred lineup.

So in the match prior to West Ham, against Leicester City, Mikel Arteta apparently saw no choice. Raheem Sterling was in the starting lineup. He huffed and puffed around but was not capable of making a difference. Things looked dismal. The match was still scoreless almost 70 minutes in. Then Sterling was replaced with Mikel Merino, a midfielder. Merino is not even a first choice midfielder for Arsenal and had never, until that point, played as a striker. But within 10 minutes of entering the match, he scored a headed goal. Near the end of the match, he scored another. A one-time thwack from a beautiful pass by Leandro Trossard.

So the question going into the West Ham match was what does Arteta do now? Put Sterling in at the start again and let him wear down the opposition, then bring Merino in to make things happen at the end? Or start Merino?

Arteta chose to start Merino.

On game day, The Emirates was subdued. It’s been a long time since we’ve experienced an atmosphere that bad. The main thing we could all get behind was this: Declan Rice takes the corners on the left side. This happens to be the side the visitors are on in the first half. So while the West Ham supporters were lustily booing Rice, the Arsenal supporters were just as lustily standing and cheering for him. The West Ham fans had some choice songs for Rice (which also managed to insult Arsenal overall) and a few for Arteta as well.

West Ham were playing with 5 defenders, which is known to be a good strategy against Arsenal. Idea being to make it hard to have a sight of the goal and then counterattack on any mistake. We dominated but, as Arsene Wenger used to say, it was sterile domination. At near the end of the first half, West Ham’s strategy paid off big time. They got a breakaway and managed to cross into the box, where it was headed beyond our keeper, David Raya. 0 – 1.

The West Ham fans were jubilant and, if we Arsenal fans had been subdued before, we were downright morose during the second half. The rabble rousers in the crowd were unable to mount a response to West Ham’s joy.

With still 20 minutes to play in the match, teenage sensation and Arsenal defender Myles Lewis-Skelly got a yellow card that, after interminable video review, was upgraded to a red card. Still, Arsenal has shown themselves to be pretty resilient after going down to 10 men and I think we still felt some hope.

All hope was lost a short time later. Arteta removed Mikel Merino and replaced him with Raheem Sterling.

That was when Arsenal fans left the stadium in droves.

But my husband and I stayed until the bitter end. And it was bitter. There is nothing worse than being in a stadium with happy opposition, especially so close to us. Hearing them chant in joy for themselves, and in derision for us.

But, if you can freely dish it out (we can and we have) sometimes you have to be able to take it.

We took it.

Devil & God, dirt & light

Amy O3 Comments

Breaking our supposed rule never to see a play on the first night we arrive in London, we located reasonably-priced tickets to Thursday’s production of the musical The Devil Wears Prada. It was easy to break because, as evidenced by even events in the dark on the last night of a trip to London, I still seem to be able to sleep through parts of any production.

I am a complete sucker for the movie and cannot resist watching it when it’s available on a streaming service. Meryl Streep is so deliciously bitchy. I could never tire of her delivery of “That is all….” Now, Meryl Steep is of course not in the musical, but add music by Elton John, how can this not be a load of fun?

Well, it was a load of fun. They liberally used much of the movie (which in turn was probably from the book, which I have not read). The actress playing–I’m just going to call it–Meryl Streep’s character (because she OWNED that role) couldn’t begin to match Meryl but she played it her way and it worked. The music was wonderful, the costumes were great, the actors did a wonderful job.

And, yes, I did doze off some. But I’ve watched the movie dozens of time. I could still follow the plot.

On Friday morning we embarked on an excursion to the The Somerset House where there was an exhibit on Soil. Yes, Soil.

It was unbelievably fascinating. Photos of tiny bacteria blown up huge, video of the sights and sounds of roots growing, a mesmerizing video of the development of a mushroom, including ethereal flows of spores. Information on gardening techniques. Stories of human response to plants, flowers, gardens. Every time I tried to hurry along some new narrative or visual captured my attention. Highly, highly recommend this exhibit.

That afternoon we took a long train ride to a different kind of exhibit, God’s Own Junkyard. This is a museum of neon signs, many created by one artist, Chris Bracey, who sadly passed away in in 2014 due to cancer. You can walk through the museum and see the works of neon art displayed and there’s a little coffee shop to sit and enjoy them while relaxing. It is very cool, and very overwhelming.

One thing that became clear to me seeing the Soil exhibit and this one in one day is the power of narrative. The way Soil was exhibited helped you to notice things you might have glossed over. God’s Own Junkyard had every square inch covered with neon signs and art. It was hard to appreciate each one individually.

But perhaps that is the point.

Later that day we went out to Battersea Power Station to view installations for the Light Festival. Battersea Power Station was formerly a literal source of electrical power for London that had been closed down in 1983 and much later converted to a very fancy mall. The light festival was a little, well, little, eight installations from very awesome to kind of ho-hum. But the mall….I am not a shopper but it was beautiful. I especially loved that they retained the old towers from the original building when they built the mall. It’s also full of old equipment from its past as a power station. There is an unbelievable amount of housing development around the mall. One of the reasons I love visiting London is the juxtaposition of old buildings to new, modern ones. This area was all new, but it was all awesome.

Our final tour was to the Brunel Museum, a museum in Southwark on the site of an engineering marvel of a tunnel under the Thames that was built by a father and son team. The tunnel was intended to allow movement of goods from one side of the Thames to another during a time when heavy boat traffic on the Thames made it very difficult to add bridges. The tunnel was started in 1825 and finished in 1843. It was never used to transport goods and initially was more popular as a tourist attraction for pedestrians. It is now used for train travel, ironically, by the London Overground.

You can enter the original shaft and, in the museum, view exhibits and equipment displaying how the tunnel was built and all the challenges the engineers and construction crew faced. Great little museum.

And close by, nice views of the city on a somewhat dreary London day.

A new hood & Fuller’s pub crawl

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After so many recent stays in Tower Hill, we were ready for a fresh, new place we’d never been. So for this trip, my husband selected a boutique hotel called Ruby Lucy in Lambeth. Lambeth is a neighborhood south of the Thames. It’s situated close to the Waterloo train and underground station, kind of a cool, old station. The station was exceedingly busy at all times, droves of people standing in front of the entrance to the tracks, staring at the board on which their track was to be assigned.

Ruby Lucy was a quirky little hotel with a great lobby and fairly spacious rooms. Each floor has an open tea station just outside the elevators and a communal iron board. Our room had a comfy queen bed and one of those crazy showers that is open-glassed on two sides to the room. It had a curtain on the outside of the shower; i.e., if you’ve failed to plan before you start your shower, the person in the room gets the choice of whether to draw the curtains or not. Good to be well enough acquainted before the trip so the choice made by the person not in the shower creates no drama.

The hotel is located on Lower Marsh Street, which was a real find. Although we were quite close to the London Eye, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the neighborhood had the feel of being very far from all of those things. Funky and a bit gritty, the street was closed to all but bike and foot traffic and, during the day, had a great little market with mostly street food. There were so many other food options available that we never partook of the street food, but it was extremely tempting. We went to a nice Thai restaurant, Sino Thai, for dinner on the day we arrived and enjoyed Cuban tapas at Cubano the next night. We had a yummy breakfast at Balance one morning.

One of the cooler things about the neighborhood was an attraction I’d never heard of before, Leake Street Arches. We had been walking down Lower Marsh Street waiting for our hotel room to be made up when I noticed a garden path leading to what looked like an underground tunnel. Inside was a broad arch covered with some of the coolest graffiti I’ve ever seen. According to the web site, “London’s largest legal graffiti wall.” An artist was working on some fresh art with a can of spray paint.

My husband, who you may recall was recovering from a concussion on our last visit and not drinking, was looking forward to visiting all the Fuller’s pubs we could. With three in the immediate neighborhood, we were able to make a good dent in his goal. His favorite beer is a Fuller’s product called London Pride. I bought some for him for Christmas at Binny’s but it’s just not the same as knowing that it is being drawn from a cask in the basement of the pub. Or so I’ve heard. The Fuller’s pubs in our neighborhood were nice but not quite the pub experience we wanted. One day we left our neighborhood for the highly rated The Harp in Covent garden. Great pub with a fun crowd AND the requisite London Pride. But no food, so after one round and a great conversation with some interesting folks, we crossed the street to visit The Admiralty, a place we’d eaten on one of our visits in December. Also a Fuller’s pub. 5 Fuller’s pubs in all; not bad for a trip with boots on the ground for three nights.

Concussed London

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Because of the concussion my husband experienced the day we left for London, he was pretty well drugged for much of the trip and somewhat limited in what he felt like doing. My work hours could have enabled us to have some morning fun, but that was often not a time when he was moving around. He is normally a much earlier riser than I, but on this trip I was often awake before he was. Many breakfasts alone in lovely cafes. Solitary walks along the Thames. This does not suck.

We were staying at the Apex City of London, which happened to be a place we had stayed in the distant past. I remembered really liking that hotel but couldn’t picture what it was like. Staying at the Apex Temple last month reminded me how much I liked the Apex City of London, so when it came into our price point–a relatively rare event over the past few years–we booked it. It is very nice. Apex Temple seems a bit more recently refreshed and I would say is nicer. But this hotel is also pretty and had everything we needed, including plenty of space in our room and a good, public space to work. Apex City of London is in the Tower Hill area. We’ve stayed in Tower Hill a lot and there are always favorite places in the neighborhood we want to re-visit. It requires a bit of effort to do new things. But, given conditions of the spousal noggin, on this trip we did more of letting the activities present themselves to us.

Furry fandom meet-up. On the day we arrived in London, Saturday, my husband went right to sleep after reaching our hotel. I went out to get coffee at a shop I’d never been to before just up the street, Carter’s cafe. I was sitting at a table with my back to the window when I noticed other people in the shop taking pictures of the window. I turned around to see what I later learned was a gathering of the Furry fandom. They were on their way over to the Trinity Square Gardens so I wandered over to watch them parading into the park.

Music concerts. The hotel is located just next to St. Olave church, as I mentioned in another post. Twice during the week they had lunchtime concerts, one a piano concert and the other a viola concert. My husband went to both and I went only to the viola recital. The church is a bit dreary outside, though with a lovely garden. Inside was very beautiful and, to my very untrained ear, had great acoustics for the music. The violist was Teresa Ferreira and she beautifully played a great selection of music from baroque to contemporary with interesting commentary between each piece. What do I know about music? Not much. But I enjoyed the concert very much.

Medieval Women at the British Library. We visited the The British Library a few years ago to see its excellent exhibit of famous books and documents, including the Magna Carta, original compositions from the Beatles, the Gutenberg Bible, and lots of other amazing treasures. During this visit, we went for a new exhibit, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words. This was a great exhibit culled from collections of books, documents, and artifacts and describing facets of life impacting Medieval women. Yes, the overall message was “life is not so good for us Medieval women, and when it becomes good, bad things happen” but it was a lot richer than that. There were bright spots where women could express themselves with poetry, song, writing, business, power, beauty. We loved the exhibit and recommend it highly.

A tour of All Hallows by-the-Tower. We’ve walked by and seen this old church dozens of times but it never occurred to us to visit until we happened upon the restaurant Byward Kitchen & Bar for breakfast one morning. To get into the restaurant you more or less enter the church hallway, and I think the restaurant might be owned by the church. The ambiance of the restaurant is awesome. So awesome I fully forgave it the good-enough-but-nothing-to-write-home-about food that was served.

After breakfast, we wandered into the All Hallows by-the-Tower church for a tour. It was amazing. The church itself is very old, parts of it older even than the Tower of London. It was repeatedly bombed during WWII and significantly rebuilt after that. There is an interesting area in the basement where remnants of melting lead from the roof flowed down the wall after the bombings. The church contains notable art and exhibits of artifacts. Most interesting to us was tiled floors that were found during a renovation that were clearly remaining from the Roman settlement in place from 40 – 410 A.D. The exhibit also included an interesting diorama of the Roman settlement in London.

A search for Roman era rivers. One day my husband and I were out walking and my husband showed me one of his public art finds from a prior day, Forgotten Streams, a piece by Cristina Iglesias. The piece depicts the ancient River Walbrook which historically started near modern day Shoreditch and emptied into the Thames but is now a sewer, according to the London Museum. It had been a boundary of the early Roman settlement. I couldn’t find a good vantage point to get a decent photo, but it was a pretty cool installation.

That prompted us, along with seeing the diorama and Roman tiled floors at All Hallows, to try to find two lost rivers, the River Walbrook and The Fleet. The Fleet starts near Hampstead Heath and ends at the Thames somewhere near Blackfriar’s station. We found the Walbrook with greater ease than the Fleet. In the end, we concluded that the Fleet might not be able to be seen due to construction on the Blackfriar bridge.

Some very amateur mudlarking. The tide was well out as we were walking along one day so we availed ourselves of some muddy stairs going down to the banks of the Thames to look at shells and other treasures piled up. After our attendance at the Mudlarking Exhibit last year I was curious to what extent it might be possible to recognize ancient objects. I found something that looked like an old pipe, similar to some we had seen at the exhibit, some broken dishes, and an interesting brick. Our finding was all catch-and-release not only because of the rules that govern mudlarking but, let’s face it, I had struggled enough before the trip to fit a week’s worth of clothing into a carry-on bag. I did not need to find room for a brick. Because the mudlarkers we met at the exhibit seemed to enjoy most of all the research into objects they found, I did a little research on the brick I found. According to the internet (yeah, I know, not really deep research), my brick was from a company that existed only for 30 years, and was at least 100 years old.

Helen Chadwick room at the Tate Modern. We arrived at the Tate Modern with limited time and mental capacity so we decided to take in a single room of the museum. The room we choose this time was the room devoted to British artist Helen Chadwick. Chadwick is known for her studies of the human body, early on mostly her own body, but later, on all the things that make a body a body. My favorite part of the exhibit was from her work in an IVF clinic and art she created with photos of fertilized eggs and dandelion seed heads.

And, of course, our week ended at the Arsenal vs. Aston Villa match. This was the only match that we had tickets for when we started our journey. Aston Villa has been tricky for us lately and this match proved no exception. I was seated next to a fun family that included a young boy whose favorite player was Bukayo Saka. His father showed me dozens of picture of the boy with members of the Arsenal team: Saka, Martin Odegaard, Leandro Trossard. On numerous occasions they had stopped by hotels that Arsenal stay at the night before matches and stalked them.

Arsenal played well and scored two goals, both by players who have been a bit short of goals lately, Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz. But somehow Arsenal lost its footing and allowed two goals from Aston Villa. The second goal really knocked the stuffing out of the Arsenal fans and the family next to me went negative. The dad actually changed seats with the kid so he could mutter dark thoughts and feelings in my left ear. I don’t share this level of negativity, but I let him vent.

With the injuries so far this season, there were no great options on the bench to try and turn things around. Despite some excellent efforts from Arsenal (including a goal that was disallowed for a handball) and attempted late heroics, nothing good came of it and the match ended 2-2.

We saw three matches during the week and got all three possible results–a loss, a win, and a draw. Not an ideal week of results but, even limited by spousal concussion, I can’t complain about the week we had. It was awesome.