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Published: September 19th 2009
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The end is here at last. Quite sad to think we are going home tomorrow! Ah well. That's life I guess!
So today we woke up early and went for our last breakfast. It was a tearjerker! Nah not really. From there we grabbed a taxi outside of our hotel and went to Portobello Rd. If you aren't familiar with Portobello, it is actually a weekly market that takes place on a long, characteristic street of London. It has great bric-a-brac, and antiques and it was something I've always wanted to see.
Next we took the world's longest bus to The London Zoo! My dad being a huge animal fan made this attraction a no brainer and it didn't disappoint. Well, it had its moments but overall we had a fantastic time. We saw everything, pigs, elephants, camels, komodo dragons, hyenas and lovebirds. It was great.
From there we took a tube ride back to the hotel and had a short 30min rest up in the hotel and then left out for our last thing of the day. The football match!
There is tons of engineering work going on today in London which turned into
a bigger headache then we were expecting. Most of the lines we needed to take to Upton Park (the venue where the match was being playd) were closed down so we had to replan what to do. We ended up taking a national train to a stop called Stratford, and then took it to West Ham where we started to look for a taxi to take us to the venue. Not a taxi in bloody sight! And we waited for ages. Finally one came from under a bridge and I waved it down and we got it. This driver was a waste of money! He took us nowhere near the stadium claiming "streets are shut down, closest I can get etc" but really we ended up walking for about 30-40 minutes from the location he dropped us off at! After all that thanks to a local man we found the venue. It was huge!
Another hurdle of the night were the tickets. Its hard to explain but when you enter the venue you have to stick in your ticket near the barcode, it beeps, and you push yourself through a caged turnstile. Dad didnt stick back for my lesson
on how they actually work as I used the system at the concert the night before, but of course, the silly kid did it wrong. He put the ticket in, and it went green, but he didnt push the turnstile in time. So to help him out I pushed my ticket in and this time he pushed and was on the other side now leaving me outside with a ticket that wouldnt let me go back in as it was already swiped! Oh i get a headache again just typing about it! Anywho, I talked to some people outside and I was let in. From there we walked about 12,000 stairs to get to the nosebleed seats of the venue. My god the stairs were so steep I thought I was going to die Ha ha!
The atmosphere at the game was incredible. Tons of drunk English people screaming back and forth it was a trip! The venue we were at was home of team West Ham and they were playing Liverpool. So fans of the opposing team is sat elsewhere and they were blocked by police in case of any riots or anything! AMAZING!
So after the
gig, we tried to catch our bus back to Stratford but it ended up not coming because of some random issue. So we got some directions and were forced to hoof it! We walked about an hour through Little India and finally made it to Forest Gate station where we took our train back to London.
We have since had a late dinner once again at La Cabanas which was great, and just got in the door and are getting ready for bed and packing for the flight.
We have a wakeup call scheduled for 3:30am as our transfer to the airport arrives at 4:25 at the hotel and our plane leaves around 9am I believe, so that will be quite interesting.
I would like to thank all of you who followed our adventures. Its nice to keep a piece of home with us.
I'm pretty tired and have to pack things still so I will add the photos when I get home.
Thanks all! David
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Ali
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So who won the match?