Tour of Notting Hill and our first "real football" match

Last weekend, Kent and I went in to London for the first time since we’ve become UK residents. An Aussie school mate of Kent’s, who used to work in sports management, got a group together to go watch a Premier League football match (aka soccer, comparable to American NFL)....so we decided to make a weekend of it and stay in London on Saturday night for a little break from our hectic schedules.

Saturday mid-day, we hopped the “Oxford Tube” bus that took us literally door-to-door...picked up almost in front of our house and one of the three stops in London happened to be in front of our hotel in Kensington. Nice huh? The bus also has wireless, so Kent was finishing up some school work so he could enjoy the weekend. We checked in to the hotel and took a nice walk in the north Kensington/Notting Hill area. We walked over to Kensington Gardens (connects to Hyde Park - that's me at the park) and also walked one of the streets where the ambassadors and embassies are – massive, beautiful houses. Of course we also had to stop and have a pint at an old pub near the park. :-)

Kent’s friend put together a plan for the group to meet up to go out in his old neighbourhood of Notting Hill, so we met up with a group of Oxford MBAs and my old family friend, Rob, who is living in London also (Mom this picture is for you!). We had a nice dinner at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant and then did a little tour of some posh bars. My favorite of the 3 or 4 plces where we had an £8 cocktail was called Beach Blanket Babylon. I just loved the funky decorations (both of these pics are from there). Needless to say, it was a fun evening.....

.....and on Sunday we “had a nice lie in” (aka slept in) and enjoyed the awesome Hilton breakfast buffet. Then we were off to do more sightseeing - picked up a tube pass for the day and headed down to South Ken. Kent walked me by where Matt used to live (very posh) and it happened to be very close to Harrod’s. J We popped in for some window shopping (it's amazing!) and then stopped in to one of the many free museums for a little bit of culture. After a nice and spicy Thai lunch, it was time to head over to the Fulham vs. Newcastle United football match for the 4:00p kickoff. We were sitting in the Newcastle end, and these blokes are crazy about their football. Cheering and chanting the entire game, especially when the underdog Fulham pulled ahead 2-1 (I was secretly rooting for the home team). The game was fun, even though we were one row shy of being under cover from the cold drizzling rain. When the wind blew the wrong direction, it wasn’t so nice.

So....sorry not too many details, but we had a great weekend in London and are definitely looking forward to learning more about our adopted home!

A not so exciting video of the match -we had great seats in the 10th row just behind the goal.