The Blitz diaries: Taking a look back at our time in London

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.

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