The Internet Cometh!
Hello All,Well it has been another exciting weekend. I find that simply walking around London is so much fun, and such a rush really. This is such a cool place!
Anyway, we did quite a bit this weekend. Saturday night, Kevin and I and another Hansard Scholar named Shaun, who is also from Northeastern, went downtown to a place called the Sports Cafe. We were told that this was the best (and possibly the only) place in London to watch American sports, and we were all eager to watch some of the baseball playoffs. Because of the time difference, the only game that we could watch was the Detroit/Oakland game 4. It started at 4:30 EST, so that meant that it started at 9:30 here. We got there (after a bit of searching) and sat down at the bar in the rear of the establishment, with a tv showing the game right in front of us. But the place showed so much more, with monitors all over the place. And this place was fairly large too! Anyway, the tv's were fine, the drinks weren't tooooo expensive, and the atmosphere was okay. That is, until we had been there a while and realized that the music that they were playing made the place seem more like a night club than a sports bar. It got me to thinking that what we Americans consider a sports bar to be is a unique concept. Here, everywhere plays club music, which probably contributes to the stereotypes of Europeans that they go out and party all the time.
Sunday, Kevin and I set out to find the house that his paternal grandmother used to live in. Kevin's dad Keith was actually born here in England, and at his request, we were off to find his mother's old house. We were able to take the Tube there, at the northern extreme of the Victoria line, an area called Tottenham. As it turned out, the house was within walking distance of the Tube stop there. The street was fairly typical of an outlying community in London, fairly run-down, but not slummish per say. When we found the house, it appeared to have been converted into some sort of small religious establishment, although the signs that adorned the building did not look recently posted, and the condition of the small lawn in front of the house didn't suggest that whoever lives there now maintains the place. After taking a few pictures, we returned to New Cross to relax for a bit before heading into South Kensington. There, Kevin and I started watching this programme on the 100 greatest albums of all time, and despite my intent to leave earlier, we ended up watching the whole thing, and I had to take a night bus back to New Cross.
Actually, I rather like taking night buses. I get to see all kinds of areas of the city, and just experiencing traveling inside a motor vehicle in England is a kind of unique experience for me, even after having been here nearly a month. Driving on the other side of the road just doesn't get old! I ended up taking a bus from Piccadilly Circus via Victoria and Vauxhall, a different route than I normally would have taken, but it let me see a few new parts of the city, which was really cool. I think I'll experiment with a few more routes (there are SOOO many of them!) before I leave.
And, to explain this post's title, the people from NTL are supposed to come this afternoon, meaning I'll finally have internet in my room! I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
~Zack
posted by Zachary Nicholson @ 10:01 AM
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