Baseball

So the last weekend in July took us to London to see the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees.  We got Tom from school and headed straight to Lancaster to park the car and head to Nami Sushi for tea.  We had conveyor belt sushi - not as much fun as it is in Japan because it is so expensive, but hey it was tasty.  Guess who had the most?

Unfortunately the trains were up the spout with the one which should have been before us being behind us - so we lost our train reservations.  At one stage it looked like 1 of us would have to stand the whole way - but we managed to get seats near each other at Preston.

Waiting for the game

The rest of the journey was uneventful.  We arrived to Ilford and were surprised at how cool it was - Lancaster was significantly warmer when we left.  We hadn't brought jumpers with us - so were a little concerned.

Max picked us up and we had a very pleasant evening drinking and chatting with Max and Helen who are great hosts.

We had a quiet morning before heading a park - wow it was hot today, and when I say hot, I mean super hot - it was going to be a sweaty day.  Helen and co took us down to Brick Lane where we had tickets to go to a brewery which had been taken over by the baseball people with lots of activities, food, drink etc etc.  We tucked into some wings (me) a dog (Tom) and pizza (Matt), had a drink and then took part in a batting activity.  Matt did ok as did Tom.  Actually Tom was the youngest to have a go by quite some way, so he won some match cards and got a pat on the head.  It was extremely hot - so much so that as soon as you finished a drink you needed another - they had free water stations to stop people from dehydrating!

A £13 beer!

We did some shopping (everything was mega expensive so we didn't buy much) and then headed back to Brick Lane where we had an ice cream from a rather lovely shop.  We wondered back to Liverpool Street and got the train to Stratford - we thought we would head to the Westfield shopping mall where we thought air conditioning might be able to cool us down.  Humm.... there were so many people in the mall that the air conditioning was having a hard time.  Oh hum, we stopped there for a 3 o'clock doughnut and another drink before heading to the Olympic Stadium for the big game.

They had gone to town on the stadium - everything was branded New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox or just USA.  All the food stalls were American (no fish and chips!), the beer was American (shame), the snacks American and the prices extra-ordinary.  Of course it was very very very hot, so the stalls were doing a roaring trade.  (Oh, observation from this trip to London, the city has gone pretty much cashless - came across many occasions where we couldn't use cash to buy things - this is not good for me as I run on cash, but I have never come across places that don't take cash before)

The biggest flags we've ever seen

We found our seats - right at the back of the stadium - so we got big drinks each time.  I drank 2 litres of pop whilst Matt drank 3 pints of lager - that was just to quench our thirst!  Had macaroni cheese for tea which was very good.

There was plenty of entertainment on the pitch - we saw everyone's backs as we were at the back of the pitch - so we saw the back of Tom Walker, the back of Meghan and Harry, the back of the US army as they brought on the massive flags and the back of the Kingdom Choir who sang the national anthems (the best rendition of God Save the Queen I have ever heard).

Then the match began.  This was an extraordinary match in that it was full of home runs - way way more than any - maybe because it was a smaller pitch than normal, or maybe because both teams were fired up.  The first innings took almost an hour - there are 9 innings to a game - it was going to be a long one.  It was a sell out - so 66,000 in attendance - you can imagine the heat!  It was fun to watch - although to be honest I prefer the chants, baton beating and balloon releases  of the Japanese matches.  There was plenty to keep us interested though.  In the end we had to leave before it would end as it had got very late and Max and Helen were staying up to drive us home.  The end result was: 17:13 to the Yankees.  We were supporting the Red Sox - but never mind.

We got back to Ilford, had a couple of drinks before going to bed.  Sunday we had another lazy morning.  Anna and Phil visited for a very lovely brunch that Max made: Huevos Ranchas. After brunch we left and made our way to Euston again to get the train home.

It was a very lovely weekend with lovely people - shame we weren't able to spend more time with Max, Helen, Izzy and Aster.  Aster starts school in September - how does that work?!  Izzy is off to America for a massive international Guide/Scout Camp in a couple of weeks - how cool is that?