well, well, well. some times it goes the other way too. this has pretty much been a great day. aside from doing laundry this morning. i’ve secured a place to stay beginning the 27th. the date’s a bit unfortunate since i have to checkout of the hotel on tuesday. i’m going to have to figure out what to do until then. i’m thinking about trying to maybe get out of london for a bit. maybe to the english countryside. that should be nice and romantic.
nobody really cares about that crap. the important news is that i got into highbury today for the match. i was able to get a ticket from a tout for p160. he had actually offered p150, but i didn’t have exact change and he ran off with out giving it. it’s a bit of a secretive transaction. according to the laws i found, it’s illegal to sell tickets, but not to buy them. anyway, i had already planned on going p160 anyway. the wise thing to do would have been to try for p140. like you should really just accept a tout’s first offer. the ticket was a single in the away section (charlton, who has an american player so it wasn’t that bad). i had overheard some guys saying that someone wanted around p300 for some. probably in the home section. the visitors section is that great of seats in the corner, but it was only 19 rows from the pitch. it was absolutely worth it. there’s only about 3 home games left until they tear down highbury. the funny thing is that i after hearing that p300 figure i had pretty much given up and was about to leave when i ran into the guy i got the ticket from.
this one was right before kickoff. i just like how you can see the flats through the corner.
here’s the lone american. i wish i had been playing for a premier league team a couple of weeks after my 21st birthday. i guess since you can drink at 18 here it’s not as big of a deal. i wanted to get one of him marking henry, but i couldn’t ever get the camera out fast enough. plus the zoom is insufficient for taking good field shots.
this is henry about to take a corner. man is he smooth.
this is a picture of the main street leading to the stadium. the arsenal tube station is to the left and a stadium corner is to the right. much different scene compared to chelsea. i wonder how it will be when they move to emirates stadium next season.
arsenal dominated the match. charlton never had a prayer of even scoring 1 goal. they were just sitting back and letting arsenal pass all over them. if you do that, you’re going to lose. henry didn’t score, but he had a sweet backheel that almost set up someone. it would have been a spectacular goal. surely it will make the highlights. i have a few other pictures and some videos (they aren’t that interesting).
a few other items. they play the same crappy sort of music you hear at american sporting events. the stadium announcers are equally corny. the arsenal mascot is some stupid dinosaur. i guess they always make it something like that for the kids. i can’t easily find anything about it on their website and i couldn’t understand what the announcer said its name was. for those that don’t know, they water the pitch before matches. twice. of course, spector slipped early and almost gave up a goal. he made a great recovery and tackle in the box. it seems like they might be over doing it. it also seemed even colder than the other night at west ham. hard to believe since it was sunny. i can’t imagine what it’s like for the players when they get wet. over the p.a., they also mentioned multiple times that they are auctioning off highbury seats. get your bids in now. they are tearing it down and going to put in new flats.
tomorrow, it’s fulham v chelsea. this could be the best weekend ever. well, until we get to germany and the u.s. wins the world cup. i may just have to kill myself after the world cup and get out on a high note.
i’ve got to try and figure out if there’s a good match to go to next weekend outside london. i would like to get to germany for the u.s. friendly, but they don’t really have any info on tickets. i’ve e-mailed ussoccer.com to see if they know anything. i would still have to sort out getting there and finding somewhere to stay and what not. otherwise, i’m going to have to find somewhere to try and catch the game here on t.v. which seems unlikely.
Congrats on another match. I’ll check BS for places to watch the US-Kraut game.
Awesome. So jealous. On Henry’s picture you can see how small the Highbury pitch really is. It’s probably the size of Altamont or the JCC. BTW, we play Birmingham City FC this Sunday. Heskey will be there.
Good times. Glad to see you starting to pick up some steam on going to matches.
What kind of camera do you have? I don’t like my digital and am looking into buying something (since the one I have was given to me.)
the camera is a casio exilim ex-s500. my only real complaint is that it only has a 3x optical zoom. i think that’s all you really get with this compacts. it’s very small and portable. no problem putting it in my front pants pocket. it’s annoying that the video isn’t really that mpeg-4 compliant, but i would consider it more of a better than nothing sort of feature.