cricket and canada...

Today Matt, Cat and I travelled in to London to catch the end of the varsity cricket match. This is the competition between Oxford and Cambridge. The match was expected to last about 6-8 hours, and we knew we couldn’t sit through all of that so we aimed to head in towards the end of the game. We were supposed to meet up with some other MBAs there, but by the time we arrived they had absconded to various pubs to watch the latest England match of the World Cup.

So we arrived at Lord’s Cricket Ground (the home of Cricket in the UK), which conveniently is situated in my old neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood. There weren’t a whole lot of spectators at the match, but we found some drinks and seats in the sun and try to figure out the rules of the game by watching the action… I’m not sure that was the most effective thing. We were able to see when good plays happened though, and we were there at the end of the match to see a victorious Oxford team leave the pitch!!

After the game we wandered around over to see the house my family lived in from 1985-1988, which was a mere 15 minute walk away. We stopped in the pub, the Clifton, which was situated right on the other side of our back yard. There we enjoyed some very refreshing Magner’s cider, and also caught the overtime of the England match, just enough to see the game go to penalty kicks and see the end of England’s World Cup dreams. :(

After the game we headed towards Covent Garden where we were supposed to meet up with many of our classmates to celebrate Canada Day! There is a pub called the Maple Leaf where the celebrations are centred each year which usually results in a little street party in the area. Unfortunately, this year the city of London didn’t allow the street party (because of the football game?), so it was really difficult to actually get into the Maple Leaf. So we did the next best thing to celebrate Canada Day, had dinner at a tapas restaurant and then went dancing in a Brazillan club…? It was fun, anyway, and it’s the intention that counts.