The Blitz diaries: Taking a look back at our time in London
Since you’ve asked (OK, just pretend you asked), here are my impressions of the entire London trip from all angles.
Friday:
This was a long day. We took a redeye flight after an early wakeup for
Thursday’s media access and arrived in London at 6:30 a.m. local time
(1:30 a.m. in Boston), took a cab straight to the Patriots’ hotel and
arrived a few minutes before the team. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Vince
Wilfork, Jerod Mayo, Sebastian Vollmer and Zoltan Mesko held court with
the media in a hotel ballroom before not-so-subtly crossing the street
for a walkthrough in Hyde Park.
It was an interesting crowd of media,
which was expected. Aside from the dozen-ish writers from New England,
this was a large London contingent who asked broad-based questions about
the players and sport in general. Sometimes, it’s good to take a step
back and listen in on stuff like this because it’s easy to get caught up
in the minutia of the day-to-day grind during the season. The players
were equal parts laid back and exhausted after the seven-hour flight, so
it was a fun, unique media experience.
I didn’t get much of an
opportunity to see the city Friday due to the combination of work,
jetlag and being awake for 24 consecutive hours. I actually fell asleep
while writing and woke up to a series of scrambled letters and numbers
because my hand was still on the keyboard when I conked out. Good times.
I grabbed a coffee from Costa, which is basically their Starbucks, and
got a lesson in European java in the process after I asked for them to
add a shot of espresso to my coffee. They weren’t fans of that at all
and explained how their coffee — an Italian blend — was stronger than
what we’ve got in America, so there’d be no need to combine the two. Got
to say, they weren’t lying. But I stuck it to the man later in the
trip, finding a nice coffee machine in the hotel that let me combine
coffee and espresso shots. I did, just because I could, and I’ll never
be the same.
Oh, and there’s the whole
driving-on-the-other-side-of-the-road thing. That’s pretty bizarre when
you experience it for the first time in a cab, but another challenge
comes in crossing the street. You take it for granted how easy it is to
look left then right before crossing. Yeah, that method will get you
killed in London. Plus, there are so many one-way streets that emerge
from nowhere, and a lot of them are tight enough to look like a Boston
alleyway, so you might not realize it’s a street. I stopped looking
right then left. I simply looked 360 degrees before praying while
crossing. Won’t miss that.
Saturday: This was when the fun started.
The NFL had a fan fest in Trafalgar Square, and the Patriots arrived at 1
p.m., which, remember, was 8 a.m. in Boston. Adjusting to the time zone
was impossible in such a short stretch, but it was still crazy to think
of the difference. Anyway, this was when Robert Kraft, Wes Welker, Rob
Gronkowski, Brandon Lloyd, Brady and Mesko took the stage and addressed
the crowd. And, more specifically, it’s when Gronkowski spiked the
microphone into the stage, which caused a huge crowd — someone estimated
20,000 — to erupt in cheers. That was a really fun atmosphere, even
before the mike spike. Also, no one expected him to spike it, so that
was a hilarious surprise when he wound up and slammed the thing into the
stage. Surprised the speakers didn’t blow out, too. That was great.
This
was my first trip to Europe, so then it became time to check out the
city. Karen Guregian, photographer Matt West and I were all over the
place. Matt knew the town fairly well, so he led the charge. We took a
quick ride on the subway, which is called “the tube” in London, though a
bunch of stops were shut down, so the ride didn’t last all that long.
Anyway, we walked along the Thames River until we got to the London
Bridge and Tower Bridge, then we found our way to Buckingham Palace.
Unfortunately, the Welsh Guards aren’t outside the giant gates, so I
couldn’t crack any of my awesome jokes to see if I could break their
statuesque appearance. Seriously, one of the great missed opportunities
of my life. It was still cool to see the place, though.
Also got a
chance to experience some real London weather. They said it was colder
than usual throughout the week, so it was necessary to wear some winter
gear. But it would go from nice and sunny to cold and cloudy with a very
light rain really quickly. This was the norm for the trip, but I think
Saturday featured more extreme cases.
After doing some work, we went
out for some Italian food at a nice spot. I know London gets a bad rap
for its food, but it was never worse than decent. The service was slower
than what we’re used to in America, but that’s just the way it goes.
Sunday:
Game day. We loaded up a media shuttle from the hotel to Wembley
Stadium, which took a little less than an hour with traffic and an odd
route. One strange thing about London is the system of roads. It’s just
about the opposite of a grid system, and there weren’t many streets that
could take you from one place to the next over a greater distance in a
quick way. Everything was tight, and there was a ton of turning, so you
couldn’t really get a great sense of direction. So, when we were in
cabs, it wasn’t easy to know if the cabbie was taking us for a ride or
not. One definitely did because he drove us through the heart of traffic
on the way to the Palace on Saturday, but we couldn’t be sure about the
others.
Anyway, the game atmosphere was great. Funny, when we
arrived, the English media were all watching the first of two highly
anticipated soccer matches of the day on television in the press box.
Not that this is a surprise, but it just reinforced the point that
soccer would still destroy football in a popularity contest if the NFL
moved there. I heard multiple times that darts draws a higher TV rating
in London than the NFL, and that was a serious, researched point. Not
making that up. There were also plenty of locals who had no idea the NFL
was in town, and that was heard Saturday when the league took over
Trafalgar Square. London is wide and spread out, but that’s hard to
miss. It really shows how much work would need to be done for the NFL to
expand overseas. There are plenty of reasons why it’s not practical,
but the lack of widespread interest is real.
The crowd was still
great. Aside from the previous point, the NFL fans in London do love the
game, and they made for a great atmosphere at Wembley. I was hoping for
some wild chants that would happen at a soccer game, but I didn’t hear
any. Still, the pockets of cheers from varying sections made it feel
like a Super Bowl. It was a fun vibe.
Hurricane Sandy was a major
topic Sunday, though, because all of our Monday flights home were
canceled early in the day, with ours getting shut down by halftime. It
was tough news to hear, but we all decided we’d make the most of it.
Monday:
Tip of the cap to Marriott for adjusting so well and extending our
reservations with the same room rate, instead of the 150 percent price
increase that would have happened if we didn’t have the NFL rate. That
made things much easier, and we got to stay downtown to explore a little
more.
So, we hit up the Cabinet War Rooms. That was the underground
bunker that Winston Churchill used to run World War II. Down the street
from Parliament and Buckingham Palace, it was his relative safe haven
for the German bombings in the city, and he stayed there from 1939-45
when the war ended. And when the war did end, everyone put their stuff
down and walked out. In 1948, Parliament ensured its proper
preservation, and they opened the bunker as a museum in 1984. For about
30 years after the war, the bunker was still a huge secret for security
measures.
It was a really cool spot if you’re a war junkie. Many of
the rooms were left as is, including Churchill’s main meeting room with
his high-ranking officers, and the central map room, where the war was
planned on maps that spanned each wall. Even the tacks were still in
place on the maps. It was awesome. Very well done.
We also checked
out Oxford Street and some other squares in the city. Back to the food
for a second: We ate dinner at The Guinea Grill, which was very good. So
if you go to London, try that spot.
Tuesday: Great flight home. Now, it’s time for the bye week.
The
whole trip was a lot of fun. The atmosphere of the game and the city’s
rich history stuck out more than anything, but it was just a cool place
to spend a few days.
The NFL is going to host two games in London
next season, so that’s a logical step in the process of expanding the
brand. Still hard to believe the league can get a team there on a
full-time basis, but as long as they keep having these trips, many will
continue to return home with a good time and a new experience.
http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/sports/blitz/index.php/2012/10/31/the-blitz-diaries-taking-a-look-back-at-our-time-in-london/
