Gardner WebLog

I think the last entry I made was a day before Sara got here.  The delay in another blog post was due primarily to such a crazy schedule of baseball, tourism, and plain old fun (or maybe a slight bit of laziness.)  Sara was here for about ten days and I think we did more than most people do in about a month’s worth of time.  I’ll briefly run through the week and touch on the best parts.

One of the best views of London besides the eye is from St. Pauls’s Cathedral.  You have to walk around 400 steps I think to the top (yes Nathan, I know it’s not Zhangjiajie National Forest and 3000 steps but it’s still hard.) Sara and I headed there on Friday afternoon to introduce her to the city top.  St. Paul’s is the second largest dome in the world next to St. Peters, and one of the most interesting things about it is what’s called the Whispering Galleries inside the dome.  The acoustics of the dome up above inside the church are so uniquely arranged that I went clear across and whispered something to which Sara heard perfectly.  It’s hard to explain, but it was cool.  After St. Paul’s we went home and had some great (missed dearly) Mexican food that mostly Sara cooked with my occasional halfway productive assistance. 

Saturday was gameday for the team I coach, and we won both of them.  Sara was our team manager and kept the bench in line and focused.  It always rains on Saturdays for the younger guys and never for the men’s team on Sundays.  It’s strange.  After a few rain delays we got the games in and had a successful day at Finsbury Park.  Sara and I hurried down to meet Marcel, my Swiss climbing buddy and his girlfriend for dinner.  They took us to a very modern type Thai restaurant around the Soho area, which turned out to be great food for great prices, score.  Instead of your average London West end musical or play, Sara and I went for the more lively show of Stomp.  It was a blast (haha) to watch them make rhythms with virtually anything from a construction site you could possibly think of.  My favorite was the beat using zippo lighters, in the dark, think about it.

On Sunday the men’s team had a game down in Brighton which is directly South of London right on the coast.  It was a perfect day for baseball, and it was also the first game we got to play in our new top notch Nike uniforms.  We took a team picture and if I ever figure out how to put pictures up on this blog, take a look.  We played well and ended up with two victories, while Sara was our team photographer the whole day, catching some great poses showing off our good looks.  Ben Moore, our catcher, was nice enough to drop Sara and I off down at the pier before taking off back to London.  We had a great time eating fish and chips and sitting on the beach.  After a short train ride back, we both went home and collapsed, long day.

On Monday I had a session out near Wembley stadium which is northwest of downtown London.  I had Sara come out and meet me after it was done so we could walk around Hampstead Heath, which is a great big park and easy to get lost in.  It definitely could be used in a horror film, with big droopy trees and winding paths into nowhere.  Our destination up there was Parliament Hill, which is supposedly the best view over the top of London (we thought it was.)  A little piece of history here…Guy Fawkes came here to watch what he thought was going to be Parliament blowing up.  You know, “Remember remember, the 5^th of November…” Thus comes the name, Parliament Hill.

 Tuesday we hit all the big tourist spots: Tower of London, Tower Bridge, changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, and a nice walk around Southwark along the River Thames.  Great day.

Wednesday was museum day: British museum and National Gallery.  Of course there was plenty to see and I think we did pretty well with getting most of it in before losing focus, not easy.  Since I don’t really cook at all, Sara was nice enough to cook a great big meal for everyone in the house.  It ended up being a few more than just who live here, but it was all good fun.  Everyone enjoyed home made falafel and we all went out afterwards.  Thank you Sara.  They are still talking about how much they liked the food. 

Thursday and Friday we didn’t do as much because I was up at the park running the London Mets baseball camp.  We had about 30-40 kids each day and it was a great success.  You can read about it at www.baseballsoftballuk.com. 

 Saturday was another game day, although by this I mean FOOTBALL.  It was the first ever Emirates Cup which is where the Fly Emirates Arsenal play.  Sara and I watched Valencia beat Inter Milan 2-0 and the Arsenal beat Paris 2-1.  The stadium was finished just last year and is amazing.  There isn’t a bad seat in the whole place.  Even though we spent all day failing to learn all of the chants and songs, Sara and I still felt like solid Arsenal fans. (I bought us both some Arsenal gear, we were very supportive.)

To cap the night off we ended up at the top of the Tate Modern for dinner looking right at St. Pauls and the rest of the City area (central London.)

I had two more games on Sunday against a lower division team, so they weren’t very close, but still fun.  Again, we got to show off the new uniforms to Sara and our “fans.”  For a conclusion of Sara’s visit we ventured down to the Angel area and found a great Sushi place called Yo Sushi, great name.  The way they serve the food is by a giant conveyer belt and you just pick up which ever food you want and they count your plates (color coded) at the end.  Interesting set up.

Thank you Sara for coming out and touring around with me.  Thanks for putting up with my sometimes not very good planning! That’s about it for the end of July and sorry it took so long to get it all out, I still have more to come on the way.  Until then…

Cheers,

 
Kyle