Family in town

The last 4 days have been very busy, the South Pas Barkers were in town following holidays around Britain and Spain.

Saturday I met David at Victoria station. He just finished a 2 week intensive Spanish language course in the south of Spain. He looked very tan, his skin tone stood out when compared to mine. “You're now an Englishman”, one of my friends later remarked on our skin contrast.

Dave and I went back to my apartment, lounged around and played some Xbox. He’d been up since 5 in the morning and wanted to relax after his journey. That evening we went up to my friends place in North London (Palmers Green to be exact) and knocked back some beers. Many good laughs were had on our respective nationalities.

Sunday we slept in to about noon, needing to recover from the night before. We  then decided to catch the Spain V USA Olympic basketball game in town.

While on our walk along the river we noticed barriers with London 2012 banners being taken down. We decided to scoop up one of the enormous purple banners for a keepsake so I grabbed one that had been rolled up and stuffed it in David’s backpack. We had grand visions of wrapping our flat with this piece of history.

Unfortunately our dreams were shattered when less than 10 minutes later some killyjoy of a worker hollered at us and demanded we return the goods. We reluctantly complied.

We settled into a Pub near the Tower of London, ordered some food and took in the Game. The pub was loaded with Yankees and many USA chants were heard. I even met a family man from Century City. A couple Spaniards were huddled near the TV with their flag wrapped around their backs.

Inevitably USA won, and swelling with pride, we continued down the opposite side of the river. We passed several hospitality houses including those of Brazil and France.

At one point we walked down some steps right to the Thames and skipped rocks till our arms gave out. I accidently stepped in the river when I wasn’t looking. Fortunately my foot didn’t dissolve away.  

Later we went back to the apartment to cool our feet.

That evening Lauren joined us for a trip out to Victoria Park to watch the closing ceremonies.  As we got off the tube station near the park we followed the crowds towards the park. Curiously enough we noticed folks walking in the opposite direction – that can’t be a good sign we thought.

Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the entrance we faced a massive “queue”. I mean 150 people wide by maybe 300 people long. What created this logjam was the airport style security everyone had to pass through to get in. Despite the wait (turned out to be 45 minutes) we decided to stick it out. Eventually we made it in, missing a good chunk of the performance but we found some couches in this pop up tent and watched the remainder of the ceremony.  We were less than a mile from the Olympic park and could see the blimp hovering over the site that was providing the aerial shots.

All in all a good show and a fun evening was had.

Pt 2 will come tomorrow.