Last night after Rugby a group of us decided to go to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of the oldest continuously operating pubs in London off of Fleet Street. It is famous for its English pub food and its overal gloomy charm. Charles Dickens was a regular, and he references the pub in
A Tale of Two Cities. The pub is sort of in a side alley, and the stairs reflect the oldness of the place. All of us had to duck to get to the bar area downstairs. There are three sublevels to the place with little nooks and tables crammed everywhere. The lack of lighting made pictures difficult, but it was what I thought of when I had imagined an English pub before I came here. They serve Samuel Smith's, which is a cheap local brew that only comes from the pumps. You can get two brewery bitters and have leftover from a 5 pound note. We stood in one of the levels and talked for a while until a table opened. One of the girls with us picked up a British guy and is going on a date with him on Tuesday. He had greasy hair.
On Sunday morning Coleen and I went to mass at Sts Peter and Paul in Islington. The priest asked the congregation to take a pez-dispenser like candy thing, eat the sweets for Fat Tuesday, and put money in the container throughout Lent and return it full on Easter for charity. I thought that was a cool charity idea. After mass I walked down to Piccadilly with Jonathan to look at some soccer jerseys that were on sale. Most of the selection focused on Chelsea and Man U so I didn't get anything, but Jon picked up a Liverpool jersey for 20 pounds. I bought an England soccer cap with the St. George's cross for 3 pounds. Now my head can be warm again. We also stopped into the Ferrari store past Regent street. It was like a Harley Davidson store on crack. They had every sort of merchandise in there, from shirts to jackets to teddy bears, shoes and even bicycles. The markup was insane. 35 pounds for a t-shirt and 750 pounds for a leather jacket with the Ferrari lion on it. The marketing major in me got really excited about that company's impressive brand management. Perfect marketing management to make people pay 40 pounds for a wallet that cost two pounds to make, just because there is a lion stamp on it. Ferrari gets money, and the customer gets a status symbol. We also went to Hanley's, which is the huge toy store in London, similar to FAO Schwarz in New York. It was a wonderland of toys, and I bought Coleen a teddy bear for Valentine's Day (yeah, we're dating now).
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing homework, and then took Coleen out to dinner at The Green, a trendy looking pub/kitchen near our flats. The dinner was very traditional English. Too English. I had beef and they gave us a weird vegetable plate with some sort of pastry and gravy. But it was still pretty good. They didn't have my reservation and just sat us in with the rest of the pub, which was weird at first. After dinner we went to an American diner called Tinseltown for desert and got milkshakes. Valentine's Day in England is much more tame. After dinner we were watching
Apacalypto (awful movie) on BBC and venting about how there was no Olympic coverage when our rector Ric walked in and pressed a magical button on the remote to pull up a whole menu of on demand BBC sports coverage. I was overjoyed that I can watch the entire Olympic hockey tournament now (except for the US opening game on Tuesday, cause I will be at a play). The BBC coverage is atrocious though, perhaps because they have no good athletes in the games. I never thought I would say this, but I miss Bob Costas. Sitting in front of that fake NBC fireplace with the musical genius of John Williams playing the background and interviewing silver medalists for their 15 minutes of fame. That's my Olympics. I'm glad the rest of my flat turns into ultra-nationalists during Olympic week just like me. Right now the four of us guys are watching figure skating and loving it. We rejoiced in our women's hockey domination of the commie Chinese 12-1 today. God Bless America.
Last night after Rugby a group of us decided to go to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of the oldest continuously operating pubs in London off of Fleet Street. It is famous for its English pub food and its overal gloomy charm. Charles Dickens was a regular, and he references the pub in A Tale of Two Cities. The pub is sort of in a side alley, and the stairs reflect the oldness of the place. All of us had to duck to get to the bar area downstairs. There are three sublevels to the place with little nooks and tables crammed everywhere. The lack of lighting made pictures difficult, but it was what I thought of when I had imagined an English pub before I came here. They serve Samuel Smith's, which is a cheap local brew that only comes from the pumps. You can get two brewery bitters and have leftover from a 5 pound note. We stood in one of the levels and talked for a while until a table opened. One of the girls with us picked up a British guy and is going on a date with him on Tuesday. He had greasy hair.
On Sunday morning Coleen and I went to mass at Sts Peter and Paul in Islington. The priest asked the congregation to take a pez-dispenser like candy thing, eat the sweets for Fat Tuesday, and put money in the container throughout Lent and return it full on Easter for charity. I thought that was a cool charity idea. After mass I walked down to Piccadilly with Jonathan to look at some soccer jerseys that were on sale. Most of the selection focused on Chelsea and Man U so I didn't get anything, but Jon picked up a Liverpool jersey for 20 pounds. I bought an England soccer cap with the St. George's cross for 3 pounds. Now my head can be warm again. We also stopped into the Ferrari store past Regent street. It was like a Harley Davidson store on crack. They had every sort of merchandise in there, from shirts to jackets to teddy bears, shoes and even bicycles. The markup was insane. 35 pounds for a t-shirt and 750 pounds for a leather jacket with the Ferrari lion on it. The marketing major in me got really excited about that company's impressive brand management. Perfect marketing management to make people pay 40 pounds for a wallet that cost two pounds to make, just because there is a lion stamp on it. Ferrari gets money, and the customer gets a status symbol. We also went to Hanley's, which is the huge toy store in London, similar to FAO Schwarz in New York. It was a wonderland of toys, and I bought Coleen a teddy bear for Valentine's Day (yeah, we're dating now).
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing homework, and then took Coleen out to dinner at The Green, a trendy looking pub/kitchen near our flats. The dinner was very traditional English. Too English. I had beef and they gave us a weird vegetable plate with some sort of pastry and gravy. But it was still pretty good. They didn't have my reservation and just sat us in with the rest of the pub, which was weird at first. After dinner we went to an American diner called Tinseltown for desert and got milkshakes. Valentine's Day in England is much more tame. After dinner we were watching Apacalypto (awful movie) on BBC and venting about how there was no Olympic coverage when our rector Ric walked in and pressed a magical button on the remote to pull up a whole menu of on demand BBC sports coverage. I was overjoyed that I can watch the entire Olympic hockey tournament now (except for the US opening game on Tuesday, cause I will be at a play). The BBC coverage is atrocious though, perhaps because they have no good athletes in the games. I never thought I would say this, but I miss Bob Costas. Sitting in front of that fake NBC fireplace with the musical genius of John Williams playing the background and interviewing silver medalists for their 15 minutes of fame. That's my Olympics. I'm glad the rest of my flat turns into ultra-nationalists during Olympic week just like me. Right now the four of us guys are watching figure skating and loving it. We rejoiced in our women's hockey domination of the commie Chinese 12-1 today. God Bless America.
I have yet to hear the olympic song!
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