Michael in London

The rest of Michael’s trip to London proved to be adventurous and tons of fun. He explored all of the usual suspects in London…Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, etc. On Thursday we planned to take a tour of Wimbledon Stadium and Stamford Bridge. We would go to Wimbledon first where we would take the train for the first leg of the journey and take a bus the second leg. At this point I’m pretty much an expert on the tube and get anywhere I need to go (as long as I have a tube map). However, I’ve only taken the buses a few times and have not needed to navigate them myself yet. Anyway, I figured out which bus we needed to take and the directions said to get off at Wimbledon…so we were all set. The tube ride went smoothly as expected; we found the bus stop, hopped on the correct bus and got off when the “next stop” sign read Wimbledon Stadium. This seemed like the most obvious choice at this point. We got off the bus and saw a fairly run down looking stadium that reads in orange letters “Wimbledon Stadium”, so we start walking towards it. Michael and I both notice that were not really in the nicest of areas, but this is Wimbledon, right? We walk around one side of the stadium in search of the entrance only to find an old car repair shop and Michael says “Maybe we should try the other side”. We walk around the other side and find a completely deserted parking lot outside the run-down stadium. There were some guys working nearby, so I asked them if they could tell me where the entrance to Wimbledon stadium is. They looked at me like I was a little crazy (but no more than usual) and pointed me towards the far end of the parking lot. Michael and I walked in the direction they pointed in complete confusion. We had a hard time believing this could possibly be THE Wimbledon Stadium. Well, upon further inspection it turns out it was not THE Wimbledon Stadium, it was a dog racing stadium called Wimbledon Stadium. Upon this discovery we headed back to the bus stop to try again. This time I asked the bus driver if this bus went to the Wimbledon Stadium where they play tennis, he said it did and would let me know when to get off the bus. Twenty minutes later and in a much nicer area of town we came upon THE Wimbledon Stadium. I didn’t need the announcement from the bus driver anymore, but it taught me the lesson that most bus drivers are quite friendly and willing to help a traveler in need.

Our tour of Wimbledon was one of my highlights so far. I’m not the biggest tennis fan ever, but have learned to really enjoy watching the game especially those at Wimbledon from my grandmother. We got to go to Center Court, Court No 1, the grass/picnic area, we walked around many of the other courts, the press interview room and the private club courts. The tour was really interesting and the grounds we absolutely beautiful!! We had such a great time. If you would ever like to visit them for yourself, please be sure you get off the bus at Wimbledon Tennis Club NOT Wimbledon Stadium!

After our tour of Wimbledon we took the tube to Chelsea where we stopped at a local café before heading to the Stamford Bridge tour, home of the Chelsea football team. Michael was pretty excited about this, but since I have no allegiance to Chelsea I was not sure how’d I like it. I was pleasantly surprised! It was a really interesting and intriguing tour. I think any sports fan would enjoy it. We got to tour the press room, the visiting and home locker rooms, players’ tunnel, the pitch and dugouts. We had a great day touring around these iconic sporting arenas.

Friday night Michael wanted to go on a Jack the Ripper Pub Crawl. I did some research and the one that got the highest reviews was a self-guided tour with suggested pubs and a history of Jack the Ripper at each of the 4 stops along the way. We met Jon after work and gathered some of his work mates to join us on this excursion. We had a great time touring the pubs and learning the history of Jack the Ripper. One of our friends, Matt, even took us by his primary school where one of the murders actually took place…creepy, yet very entertaining!

We purchased tickets to a Charlton Football match for Saturday (the same team we tried to go to with Ashley and Bryan, but was cancelled due to a frozen pitch). The match was in the afternoon and we headed up a few hours before the match to take in the atmosphere of a proper football match. We had a few pints at a proper pub nearby and then headed to the pitch. The match was great! Although, we were cheering for Charlton and they lost we still managed to have a wonderful time. It was a beautiful day and the atmosphere was roaring!

We spent the rest of our time with Michael touring some of our favorite spots such as The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, SoHo, Chinatown and of course Borough Market. We had such a great time with Michael and have felt so lucky to have some many visitors make the long trek over here!