Day 4

First of all, no one told me Iowa State is 2-0 in Big 12 and Royce White had a triple-double? I'm keeping you guys up to date on London and I gotta find this news about "the States" on the internet? :) Interestingly I've met someone from Cedar Rapids, talked with a Beefeater who has been to Des Moines, and gotten "Go Hawkeyes!" yelled at me over here in London.

Anyway, today was our free day and we filled it up pretty well. First of all we went to the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. We didn't get a good look at what happened behind the gates but we did get a good view (and video) of the Guards march over which was probably the coolest part anyway. We were also surprised to see a dog "marching" with the Guards. Don't worry, he was supposed to be there and was also on a leash.

There isn't much that rivals the atmosphere of a European Football match (soccer) and we got to experience it from the seats. We arrived early wearing our Chelsea garb at Stamford Bridge, the home of the Chelsea Blues (but are often just referred to as Chelsea). We got some awesome pictures and got to stand about 5 feet from the pitch as the seats go very close to the field. As I said, the atmosphere is unrivaled by anything I've experienced in the US. I've been to a lot of sporting events in my life and the only other time I've seen an event that packed was Pella vs. Pella Christian...and this game wasn't even that important. We participated in cheers and joined in the excitement after each of the four goals by Chelsea. We even got a giant flag passed overtop of us as a regular pre-game event. Chelsea won 4-0 which was great but it was awesome before the game even started.

After the game nearly all 41,529 fans were walking out at the same time and the width that we all had to get through was about the same width as a regular street in Pella or from shoulder to shoulder on a highway, so not very big. We didn't have a choice in the direction we were going. We went where the flow took us. Oh! they also had a drug/bomb sniffing dog when we walked in!

We then met up with everyone else and got some food at this fancy noodle restaurant which was very good. We then broke off again and we just meandered and mozied around the streets of London around Picadilly Circus (which is like a smaller, older Times Square that I've mentioned before). It was really relaxing and it was pretty cool because the streets don't make sense so we just winded around and explored a little bit.

I wish the internet was faster and that I would remember my cord so I could upload some videos and pictures but they will definitely come up once we get back to the States. Tomorrow we head up to Liverpool which is about 4 hours but we're stopping somewhere on the way up for a while and I 'm not really  sure what we're doing.

Someone has to videotape the Championship game tomorrow or something for me! They don't care about "American Football" over here. I dunno if there will be as convenient WiFi spots as what we have here in London so I'm not sure if I'll be able to post or not but I will when we get back here in a couple days for sure. Have a good one!