Stonehenge

Look up any sort of "Top 10" or "Top 12" or "Top Whatever" list of tourist attractions in England and Stonehenge is bound to be on the list. Before I started writing this post I Googled some top 10 lists to see if my supposition was correct and found Stonehenge first on two lists, third on another and ninth on the last. Yet in early August of this year, despite spending some of my youth in the United Kingdom, I had never been there. Neither had my parents. Or my sister. Or my grandparents. Or any of my cousins. I found one aunt and uncle (out of three couples) who had actually been to Stonehenge and that was years and years ago. If this recent trip to England was about fixing holes in my English experience (and it was), I knew I had to add a trip to Stonehenge to my itinerary.

So maybe just a sentence or two about Stonehenge is required before launching into what I found earlier this month on my trip there. Before I arrived at the site, I really knew very little about the circle of stones that makes up Stonehenge.  I knew it was world famous, thousands of years old, had a purpose that nobody seemed to agree on and somehow was connected to the solar cycle. Other than that, I would have struggled to describe anything more about the place. It is one of the most famous places in the country where I was born and I basically know nothing about it. It was time to find out.

The excuse I had always been offered (by my parents I suppose) as to why I had never been to Stonehenge was that it was (a) difficult to get to and (b) crowded. From that description, I imagined the stones in the middle of some densely populated English town with throngs of tourists milling around and within the circle, touching and leaving whatever was on their grubby paws on the centuries old stones. In some of my imaginings, the circle was in a traffic roundabout with packs of people crossing the road to get to it dodging cars and lorries like a game of Frogger. None of that turned out to be true. Not the Frogger. Not the roundabout. Not the tourists touching the stones. Not the crowded. Not even the difficult to get to.

The first sighting of Stonehenge.

OK, so it's not super easy to get to, but it is by no means difficult. For those folks with a car, it seemed really easy. The roads are both pretty and also pretty wide and the parking lot outside the visitors' center is huge. I didn't have a car while I was in country so my trip was perhaps a little longer and more involved but again by no means difficult. Sure, getting there involved the Tube from our hotel to Waterloo Station in London, a train from London to Salisbury, a double decker bus from the train station to the visitors' center and then a coach (of sorts) ride to the stones themselves. I managed to make it one step more complicated by getting off the coach halfway and wondering through a field of cows before finally making it to my destination.

Despite how involved all that seems, it was remarkably easy. Trains and buses run on schedule in England so the process of transferring from one mode of transportation to the next was super simple. The most difficult part of the whole thing was dealing with the South West Trains' staff who proved to be incredibly unfriendly and utterly unhelpful. I don't suppose they care that much but the next time I'm in England, I'll do what I can to avoid their train service.

So after the Tube, the train, the double decker bus, the coach (of sorts) and walk through a field of cows, you finally find yourself on Salisbury Plain, which is an absolutely gorgeous unspoiled English countryside dotted with prehistoric burial mounds, strange and very large scale markings on the ground and a fairly prominent henge. The place is peaceful (if you ignore the tourists) but it is clear looking at the stones in front of you that something pretty spectacular at one time or another was happening here. You can't get within probably 50-75 feet of the stones any more but the size and mass of the individual stones is pretty obvious. It's not surprising folks have been trying to wrap their brains around these things for a century plus.

Stonehenge is not the only circle of stones in the British Isles that pre-dates written history or befuddles scholars as to its exact meaning.  There are spectacular circles of smaller stones some of which look like they have been thrown into the ground by giants all over Scotland and the islands off the coast of northern Britain. But Stonehenge is much different. There are actually two circles of standing stones at Stonehenge surrounding a series of smaller stones which are either lying on their side or standing up. The larger standing stones are local to the area; and by local, I mean brought from 30 kilometers or about 20 miles away in an age where machine power didn't exist. These things weigh about four tonnes each (a tonne is a metric ton or 2,204 pounds). That's a long way to roll something that big.

The smaller stones on the inside of the circle are NOT local to Salisbury Plain. Those stones (and by smaller I mean "just" one or two tonnes) were brought to the site from southwest Wales which, while being the closest part of Wales to Salisbury, is about 240 kilometers or almost 150 miles away. Again, without machine power. Amazing!

The biggest differentiator between Stonehenge and other circles of stones in Britain, however, is that Stonehenge is the only circle with lintels, meaning the horizontal pieces of stone which span over the top of two adjacent vertical stones. While I imagine it is very difficult to get a stone weighing about 9,000 pounds to stand on its end without any machinery, I can't begin to fathom how difficult it is to put a stone on top of two other stones when the tops of those stones are about 12 or 14 feet off the ground.

This is likely the understatement of this entire blog (including the parts that aren't written yet), but the people that built Stonehenge were obviously extremely motivated. I mean, think about it. In an age where probably most of any human's time was spent trying to just survive, a group of people took time out of their day to move huge stones hundreds of miles on primitive wheels, then surrounded those huge stones with even bigger ones erected vertically after shaping those stones into roughly rectangular masses using other pieces of stone (metal tools were not used when Stonehenge was erected). And as if that weren't enough, they then decided to cap those stones with other stones which is not like tipping a big stone into a pit and then straightening it; you have to actually get the whole thing off the ground using a lot of men and I imagine levers and pulleys of some sort. It's absolutely astounding what these people did.

I can honestly say after spending an hour walking around Stonehenge at a distance slowly, that I understand a lot more about the place. However, I still don't know what they were used for and neither does anyone else. The audio guide you pick up as part of your admission ticket does an excellent job of narrating the history of just about every theory advanced about the stones but wraps it up with absolutely no conclusions, because there is no consensus about the purpose of these things. I get that "sacrifice site" has been ruled out but "observatory", "burial ground", "shrine to honor the dead" and many other things are still on the table and likely will be forever. This is a puzzle we are not solving any time soon because there's nothing written down by the people that built it (hence the term prehistoric).

I do know that the place is younger than 5,000 years because scholars know (or think they do, I guess) that the earliest burials at the site were taking place at about 3,000 B.C. when the stones were not in place. And there has to be some kind of solar connection because the design of the henge starting at the heel stone creates an axis that aligns with the rising sun on the solstices. I also know that I'm impressed by what I saw earlier this month near Salisbury. I don't have a bucket list and don't imagine I will ever make one (I refuse to have a list of things that when completed allow me to give up and die) but Stonehenge was surely on my must see in England list and it was worth the 90 minute train ride and 20 minute bus ride and 20 minute walk through a field to get there. Now at least when my niece asks me years from now if anyone in our family has been to Stonehenge, I'll be able to say yes.

And in case you are wondering...cows do not get spooked by Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge" being played on an iPod while walking through their field. At least they didn't the day I was there. I kept a watchful eye out just in case though. I had to listen to Spinal Tap while walking there. Just had to.

How To Save Money In England

The Tower of London: cheaper with advance purchase; even cheaper if you refuse the charitable donation.

This post represents the halfway point of me blogging about my recent trip to England. I don't often offer travel counsel on this blog because that's not really the point of telling stories about my travels, but I thought I'd make an exception since I think I actually have some useful advice to dispense here. So here goes.

If you are heading to England for vacation, and particularly London, I'd recommend you take a lot of cash or make sure you have some money set aside in your bank account to pay the bill you are inevitably going to have to deal with when your credit card statement arrives in the mail. This place is expensive. I mean like really expensive. Just using food as an example, I found the cost of meals at restaurants approximately the same in pounds as you would expect to pay in dollars in the United States. Considering a pound is worth 60 to 70 cents more than a dollar, you are essentially paying 60 to 70 percent more for meals. Think about that when you are ordering.

Traveling is often confusing. The customs of our own country don't always apply to a foreign land and if you visit without even a little research, you could find yourself surprised and forced to think on the spot with no resources to help you. Visiting a place where you speak the language helps, but not always. When I went to Iceland last December, I neglected to check the exchange rate for Icelandic Kronas and ended up taking $800 out of the ATM when I first got there; not surprisingly I still have some Krona nine months after that trip. So for those of you out there looking at a trip to the United Kingdom, here are some money saving tips that saved me this time around.

1. Pay for Your Hotel in Advance

So this tip doesn't really just apply to traveling in England, or Europe for that matter, but if you are a chain hotel person (I generally am), you can probably save some significant money by committing early to a room. When reserving a hotel room in larger hotels, the hotel is generally able to offer a discount on your stay if you reserve early and pay in advance. Of course, the catch here is the room is completely non-refundable and non-changeable, so if you somehow find yourself unable to travel when you thought you would be able to or just simply change your mind, then you are out of luck. But if you can make an early decision and stick with it, then you could save generally 15-20% on the cost of your room.

I realize that 15-20% may seem like a small discount and maybe it's not worth it for a night or maybe even two. But for me, the cost of a hotel is the single biggest expense on a trip and saving even 10% would be worth it. The cost here adds up, especially if you are staying put for any significant time. My hotel in London cost me about $200 per night after the exchange from pounds to dollars. I booked in advance and so I saved between 15-20% on the room. That's a savings of $30-$40 per night. Over six nights, that's a couple of hundred bucks which is nothing to sneeze at. This is one of my favorite ways to save money on trips; I use this strategy all the time. I'm sure I've saved hundreds this year alone.

2. Get an Oyster Card

I love the London Underground (or Tube). It goes everywhere in the city, it's quick, it's clean, it's safe and it comes regularly, even on weekends. Whichever station you visit during reasonable hours, you can expect no more than a couple of minutes wait. Considering the alternatives, which I suppose would be walking (which takes a long time) or taking a cab (expensive!), it's the ideal way to get around which is why it tends to be always packed, even on a Sunday afternoon. I know there's no way I could have completed my typically ambitious itinerary on my London trip earlier this month without spending a lot of time in the Tube.

But if there's one thing the Tube is not, it's cheap, especially if you pay cash. The minimum cash fare on the Tube is £4.70, which is about $7.75. That's a ton of money, especially if you take multiple trips in any one day. There were some days I took five or six rides on the Underground in a single day; no way do I want to be shelling out $50 or more just to get from place to place in the day. Fortunately, there is a solution, which is to get an Oyster Card, which is an electronic pay as you go touch card that you can load money onto and which offers a significant discount over cash fares. Discounts on the Tube when using an Oyster Card can be 50% or more and the cards are available in advance loaded with money from the London Underground website. We ordered our Oyster Cards on a Sunday night and they got to Arlington, Virginia the following Thursday; just like the Tube, they came quickly. I spent about £60 on the Tube in London in six days; that's about $17 per day. If I were paying cash, I'd easily have doubled that.

3. Free Beer

This is not a typo. If you are smart, there's free beer for the taking.

Over the past few decades, pub visitorship is down in England. As societal norms and gender roles have changed (not to mention the availability of alcohol in stores), fewer men are going down to the pub after work without their wives to drink delicious cask beer heavily and then hopping in a car and driving home. This has caused closure of all but the best pubs in the country and has caused a real crisis for pub owners so they have started to entice people to come back to the pub with an offer of free beer. That's right, FREE BEER!!!

The picture above is a screen shot from a pub in London called The Dove. Notice the words in the upper right of the screen. That's right: "free beer?" Clicking on this link will ask you to sign up for The Dove's mailing list in exchange for a free drink (you can unsubscribe easily). Other pubs, including the Duke of Wellington on Portobello Road in the Notting Hill section of London, have similar offers. Now, if you are a Londoner, the offer of one free beer over the course of a lifetime at a pub you will visit frequently is not much of a bonus; but if you are on vacation, you can pretty much get a free beer a night if you are smart, and that IS worth something. A beer in London will set you back about $7. It's worth signing up and getting a free pint.

4. Don't Tip

OK, let me clarify. Don't tip 15-20% like we do in the United States. It's not expected and it's not required. If you get really excellent service, then consider a 10% tip or so. The pay structure of wait staff is totally different in Europe than it is over here in America. People serving you food are not working for less than minimum wage with the understanding that they will make more based on tips. There's a reason the food costs 60-70% more than it does at home.

The Tower Bridge seen from the top deck of the Thames River Services' boat. Two discounts at once.

5. Buy Attraction Tickets Before You Leave Home

So this is similar to paying in advance for your hotel rooms, but unlike other destinations, I found this situation to be peculiar to London. In planning my trip to London, it seemed to me that there are a number of tourist attractions that offer discounts if you are willing to book on line in advance and (mostly) commit to the date you are visiting. Unlike reserving hotel rooms and paying in advance, you will likely not save 15-20% but there is an opportunity to save a few bucks (or quid) by committing early and sticking to your plan.

Tickets to St. Paul's Cathedral are £1.50 less expensive on line in advance. Tickets to the Tower Bridge are £2 cheaper in advance. And buying ahead of time at the Tower of London saves a ton of money; you can purchase tickets on line for £1.10 cheaper than in person but decline the additional voluntary charitable donation and you can knock an extra £1.90 off the ticket price. I know this is taking little bites of the apple but these discounts add up. At the very least you might be able to save enough to have an extra beer at a pub later on in addition to the free one you have already secured. Most tickets commit you to visit on the specific day you choose; the Tower of London allows you to visit within seven days of the date you select so that's a little more flexible.

Finally, sort of in this same category, one of the most popular tourist attractions in London is a boat ride to Greenwich (or beyond) on the Thames. This tour allows you to see most of the great sites in London from the water and gives you a great lay of the land (or water, I guess) while resting your feet for a little while if you tend to walk as much as I do when I'm on vacation. Most tour boats offer on line discounts in advance; the best value to me seemed to be Thames River Services, which knocks 50% off the £17 price for the tour from Westminster all the way beyond the Thames Barrier, a two hour tour in total. They even offer a 50% off coupon on the internet which allows you the full discount without committing to a date at all. There's no question that this deal was probably the best I got in London. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I'm sure there are other ways to save money in England, but there are my two cents (pun intended). I hope others can learn from my research. I haven't steered you wrong, I promise.

Baker Street

I am a big believer in lists and rankings. Show me any sort of "best of" list be it ranked or unranked about any subject I am remotely interested in and I'm all over it. Music charts, basketball power rankings, top restaurants, best travel destinations…the list of lists could go on and on. Rolling Stone magazine seems especially adept at making lists that distract me for hours and hours. I still have their 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s issue from November 16, 1989 and their Top 100 Game of Thrones characters list they published last year made me stop working for a while on the day it was published so I could digest the whole thing in detail (I made up the time, I swear). My favorite new (to me) lists may be Eater.com's lists of best 38 or 18 restaurants for cities in the United States and Canada. Essential stuff to find some good grub on the road.

Over the years, I've made my own share of lists. The last two summers I've ranked NBA mascots and team names on my other blog, My Swag Was Phenomenal, which details my life as a Washington Wizards fan. When I was in college at the University of Michigan, my friend Andrew Royster and I used to include a Top 10 albums list (that I am sure were heavily overfilled with Moody Blues albums) in every letter we wrote back and forth to each other (this is when people actually wrote letters on pieces of paper; imagine that!). Even at 46 years of age, I continue to make music lists today; every year I make an unranked list of 50 albums that I would take to a desert island with me as a way of recording my current taste in music.

So considering my obsessions with lists and especially music lists, I have to have a number one song of all time, right? That's correct. I do. My hands down, no question about it, number one song of all time is Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street". So it seemed appropriate to me to make a quick pass by the real Baker Street in London when I was on the other side of the Atlantic a few weeks ago so I could pen a few words about my favorite song ever.

"Baker Street" wasn't always my favorite song. I remember as a kid really hating the song when it was released, although admittedly most of the reason I disliked it was that it was keeping "The Smurf Song" by (you guessed it) the Smurfs, from the number one position on the English pop charts. I remember sitting with my dad in our car while on vacation in France that summer listening to the announcement of the number one song and being disappointed by the Smurfs still being at number two. My musical taste has matured just a bit since 1978, although I still have my Smurfs 45 rpm single.

Looking south down Baker Street, August 29, 2014.

"Baker Street" is about Rafferty's struggles to extricate himself from a record deal he had signed while a member of Stealer's Wheel, a group that released three albums in the early 1970s. While with Stealer's Wheel, Rafferty wrote and released the song "Stuck in the Middle With You" which might not have been a hit at the time but continues to enjoy plenty of airplay today. When he decided to dissolve Stealer's Wheel and go out on his own, his record company objected, claiming he was under obligation to record for them and blocked any release or recording of a solo album.

So for a three year period during the 1970s, Rafferty was involved in a legal fight to record as a solo artist which required him to travel to London a lot. While in the city, he ended up staying at a friend's place on Baker Street, which is obviously how the song got its name. "Baker Street" is not exactly an uplifting song. It's full of imagery about how depressing the city is and a longing for time in the country living a quieter, less complicated life. The lines "This city desert makes you feel so cold/Its got so many people, but its got no soul" in the middle of the first verse set the tone right away. Along the way to the end of the song, he explains how disillusioned he is with the music industry and describes drinking every night as a means of coping with what he is going through and escaping the personal hell that the city represents.

Despite the depressing nature of the lyrics, I find the song very romantic and it sort of has a happy ending. I love the character who is haunted by meaningless relationships and a love of alcohol as a means of coping (Rafferty struggled with alcohol for most of his life). Musically the song is amazing. It is punctuated at critical points by gorgeous saxophone playing by Raphael Ravenscroft (I actually have his solo album which I assume was recorded off the success of "Baker Street", for what that's worth) and a guitar solo after the last verse which is surely overshadowed by Ravenscroft's playing but which is no less deserving of recognition. It's an odd song to achieve worldwide acclaim; it's not structured as a verse-chorus with a bridge type of song. I guess its popularity is a measure of its brilliance.

I realize this post isn't really about my trip to England, so if you are disappointed in reading this I'm sorry. But I thought Gerry Rafferty deserved this post (he died in 2011 so won't be making any more music). This song has made my life better and I'm glad my stopping by Baker Street in London allowed me to co-opt my own blog for selfish reasons for just one post.

Gerry Rafferty's City to City; "Baker Street" is track number two.

London Pride

If you know me at all, you know that I love beer. I think it is one of the most wonderful things man has ever created. Now, because I also love travel, I love exploring beer when I travel if I am in the right place at the right time. That might be exploring the dusty brewery of the last remaining true lambic producer in the world in Brussels or marveling at the size of the largest single site brewery on the planet in Golden, Colorado or tasting the initial offerings from a brand new microbrewery in Portland, Maine. I've toured breweries throughout the United States and Europe and while I still have a little way to go to cover every brewery on my beer bucket list, I think I've seen a lot of great beer sites over the years.

England, of course, is one of the great brewing countries of the world so my recent trip back home to Britain offered me the opportunity to explore beer history once again. Generally speaking, there are three great brewing traditions from which all modern beer brewing is descended; these are the Belgian, English and German brewing traditions. Pretty much everything else everywhere in the world is a derivative or combination of what happened centuries ago in these three countries. Within England itself there are also three great historical beer brewing areas (with apologies to Newcastle perhaps); these are Burton-upon-Trent, Yorkshire and London. I managed to tour the Bass brewery in Burton when I visited England in 2007. That same trip, I also visited the Samuel Smith and Theakston breweries in Yorkshire. But I'd never visited an historical London brewery. This trip offered the opportunity to fix that hole.

London Pride. The Ox Row Inn, Salisbury.

The history of London stretches back centuries as does the history of brewing in the city. London was established by the Romans about the time of the A.D./B.C. crossover but the development of the city really took off after the unification of England in 974; in 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England from Normandy and shortly thereafter built the White Tower in what is now the Tower of London. Brewing beer in the city was certainly going on at least as far back as the Middle Ages; the Worshipful Company of Brewers was established as one of the earliest trade guilds as far back as the 12th century. In 1345, brewers in London were banned from using the river Thames as their water source and resorted to drilling their own wells to supply clean water for brewing.

In a 1,000 year plus brewing history, which includes a rich ongoing tradition, London's beer heyday may have been the 1700s, when porter, which originated in London and was allegedly named for its most loyal drinkers, became the world's most popular beer. This type of beer, which required aging, tended to be brewed by larger established brewers who had capacity to store beer in the aging process while simultaneously brewing new batches of the same or different brew. Many of the most famous London brewers were either established or grew to prominence in the 18th century based on the popularity of porter, including Whitbread and John Courage.

But time took its toll on London brewers. As property prices rose and better infrastructure and resources became available in the suburbs or even in rural areas, the land on which many breweries stood became too valuable for their owners to resist selling. And so most simply did just that and got out of town. By the turn of the 21st century, the number of historic London brewers still in the city was down to two: Young's, established in 1831, and Fuller's, established in 1845. In 2006, Young's agreed to sell to the Wells Brewery in Bedford and that brewery, like so many before it, left London for somewhere cheaper. Fuller's, though, remains and their brewery in the Chiswick area of London was my destination early on a Tuesday morning earlier this month.

The malt mills; 4,000 kg per hour (red mill) and 3,000 kg per hour (blue mill).

Before I write about my visit to Fuller's, however, it's probably worth spending a couple of paragraphs talking about English beer. Historically, the majority of English beer produced was cask beer, meaning beer that after either fermentation or maturation is placed into casks with a small amount of yeast and continues to "live". Once in the cask, the yeast breaks down the sugars from the malted barley into alcohol and carbon dioxide, just like it did in the initial fermentation. This is to distinguish it from keg beer, which is placed in a keg which looks very similar to a cask, but which is carbonated or nitrogenated (depending on the beer) at the tap in the pub or bar which serves it to you.

The result of cask conditioning is a more lightly carbonated beer (what some English beer novices refer to as flat) with a richer depth of flavor. Depending on the type of malt used, cask beer often tastes very bread-y. It is also far more delicate than keg beer. Keg beer generally keeps about six months; cask beer keeps about five weeks, and only three days after it is tapped. It is a product which over the years has disappeared and which you cannot find at all if you don't live reasonably close to a brewer committed to a cask product. Its taste (particularly from traditional English brewers) is more subtle than a lot of American beers and is best enjoyed at a temperature slightly warmer than the ice cold temperature that less enlightened folks serve beer at.

For the American beer drinker, the experience of drinking English beer is often unsettling. Rather than a frosty cold bottle or can of beer, you are faced with a more refined product that is warmer, flatter and sometimes reminds you of some kind of wheat bread or tea. It is a much different drink but if you can struggle through the first day of sitting in pubs with a pint or two from a hand pump, you start to understand how delicious this stuff is. It's something to be savored slowly in a place much older than I now live in rather than ordered in a bucket at a happy hour discount. It has far more character than most beers you have ever tasted, I promise.

The brewery's original mash tun.

Tours of the Fuller's brewery are offered weekdays from 11 am to 3 pm every hour. Getting to the brewery for most London visitors involves hopping on the District Line of the London Underground to the Turnham Green station, then a 20 minute or so walk south to just before the bank of the Thames. Beer has been brewed on the site of the current brewery since before 1700; the current brewery established by John Fuller, Henry Smith and John Turner as Fuller, Smith and Turner dates from 1845. John Fuller owned 50% of the equity in the original partnership and thus got his name listed first; today, the brewer is simply known as Fuller's although descendants from more than the Fuller family are involved. It is now the largest family owned brewery in Britain.

Fuller's main beer offering is London Pride, a mildly bitter beer with a full flavor of malted barley without a strong hop character. London Pride makes up 75% of the brewery's output yearly so it's clearly their flagship beer. But London Pride is not the only beer brewed by Fuller's. Most Fuller's pubs (more on that later) will have Chiswick Bitter and ESB as cask offerings and either Honey Dew, Fuller's organic beer made with (surprise!) honey, or some other sort of beer on tap as a keg beer. All their beer is produced at the Griffin Brewery on a single site in Chiswick. The griffin, a half lion, half eagle mythical creature is a guardian of treasure; the treasure in this case is Fuller's beer and if I had a lot of that stuff, I'd want a griffin guarding it too.

Casks being cleaned and filled.

Before my visit to the Fuller's brewery, my experience with their beers was limited to keg and bottle London Pride and bottled London Porter, Black Cab Stout and Bengal Lancer India pale ale. All of this stuff is top quality beer and I was anxious to drink a lot of it while in London (mission accomplished by the way!) as well as walking through the halls where it is brewed every day. For me, this was a real pilgrimage of sorts. Tours of the brewery start at the Mawson Arms, the brewery's historic pub at the northeast corner of the property. I was happy to see they were willing to serve me a half pint of Black Cab Stout as an aperitif if you will before the tour, even if it was only 10:40 in the morning; definitely worth getting to Mawson's 20 minutes before our scheduled tour time.

If you have been on a brewery tour before (and from the opening paragraph of this post I hope you understand I have maybe once or twice), you are not going to see any magic tricks or super secrets walking around the Fuller's Brewery. But of all the breweries I've visited, this tour was perhaps one of the top two or three. The explanation of the brewing process on the tour is super clear and the amount of beer available at the end of the tour is plentiful, which is ideal if you have traveled over 3,000 miles across an ocean to get there and you are using public transportation to go home. Our tour guide, Colin Ford, was also excellent, which I am sure had a really positive effect on the tour.

The tour starts, like most brewery tours do, with an explanation of the brewing process and a discussion of the four ingredients used to make beer - malted barley, water, hops and yeast. My tour guide at the Coors Brewery in 2001 explained the four ingredients of beer as rice, barley, water and hops; I questioned him on this and was informed that yeast is not an ingredient because Coors takes it out of the beer before bottling. I cringed at Coors but didn't have to at Fuller's. They get it in London.

Following the introduction to the process, which included a much welcome malted barley tasting, you are walked by the brewery's historic 150 year old mash tun where the water and barley are cooked to make wort; then past the lauter tun (or "old copper" at Fuller's) where the wort liquid is separated from the solids and the hops are added; and then on to the fermentation tanks where the yeast is added and the stuff finally becomes beer. After about a seven day fermentation period, Fuller's beer is placed into finishing tanks before it is bottled, casked or kegged.

There are a couple more stops on the tour that clarify the brewing process. After ogling the mash tun for a few minutes, we were taken by the malt mills which crush the malted barley so it can be cooked into wort. I'd never seen these things before on any of the other brewery tours I have taken; the ones at Fuller's take up a few square feet but crack all the barley for all the beer in the brewery which was pretty amazing. The other interesting stop was the keg and cask filling line, which again was a first for me. I'm used to seeing bottling or canning lines which are typically non-operational because most of the tours I've taken have been on weekends. Seeing the contrast between kegging (which is all automated) and casking (which involves three or four people working full time) was striking.

London Porter, Jack Horner, London.

Most brewery tours end with a few slightly larger than shot glass sized cups of beer and a little pressure to spend some additional money on some of the brewery's beer. Fuller's was way better. One of their old hock cellars (or underground storage rooms) has been equipped with a fully functional bar offering most things Fuller's. Here you can get a good idea of the high quality and excellent flavor of Fuller's beer in half pint (you read that correctly and remember an English pint is 20 ounces) glasses. Considering I was in a bit of a rush, I only managed a half pint each of Chiswick Bitter, London Pride, ESB and Black Cab Stout but I believe I could have had more. The brewery and the Mawson Arms were the only places I found Black Cab Stout when I was in London. This stuff is so rich and smooth and delicious. Next time I visit London I'm going to find a pub that has this stuff and sit there all day one day and drink it. The tasting was not the only reason my experience at the Griffin Brewery was excellent, but it didn't hurt by any means.

Overall, two things struck me about my experience at Fuller's which enhanced my beer drinking experience in England. First, the flavor of Fuller's beer is based more than anything on the malt that is used in each type of beer. I made an effort to seek out Fuller's beer more than any other beer while I was in London because I wanted to drink a product from a brewery with history that still does things largely the same they did in 1845. The brief malt tasting in the beginning of my brewery tour could be tasted with each pint of Fuller's post-tour. This was most noticeable in the draft (or draught, if you will) London Porter I found at the Jack Horner pub on Tottenham Court Road. I could taste the bitterness from the chocolate malt I chewed at the brewery on my palate while drinking a pint or two with a chicken and chorizo pie.

Secondly, the effort required to produce cask beer (rather than keg beer) was obvious. A lot of brewers in England have abandoned or reduced cask output due to the labor cost involved. The process of removing the bungs and cleaning the casks is not easy and involves manual labor which means money. I think Fuller's and other breweries who still produce cask ale deserve some recognition for choosing flavor and sticking to their roots over a quick buck or pound. The product is largely unique to England and I think it is well worth the effort. I've had one or two beers in the U.S. since I got back and I'm longing for some cask beer.

I'm thinking I don't have too many brewery tours left in me but I am way glad I stopped by Fuller's in London. I can truly say this was one of the best tours by one of the best brewers in the world. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how useful their website is. I made drinking Fuller's a priority in London but I wouldn't have been as successful without the pub finder on their website. Their website lists all their pubs (pubs in England are often tied to and owned by breweries, which is significantly different than in America) and what beers are currently on tap in kegs and casks. I found this feature to be 100% accurate based on the four Fuller's pubs I visited in London. Without it, I never would have had any London Porter on tap and it was very very difficult to find. Next time I visit London, I'm going to follow my day sitting in a pub drinking Black Cab Stout with a day in another pub drinking London Porter. This stuff is that good. So I'll end with a thank you to Fuller's. You made my experience in England way better. I wouldn't have missed all this for the world.

This post was mostly written while drinking a couple of cold London Prides in the glass I brought back from the brewery. It was in bottles unfortunately but still delicious.

Playing bartender at the Mawson Arms with a  half pint of nectar of the gods, aka Black Cab Stout.

English Grub

Since my family immigrated to the United States in 1979, I have returned to England five times, meaning I've spent all of about a couple of months there in over 35 years. Each time I've been back, especially as an adult, I've looked forward to different things and explored corners of the country that I've never visited before. In some respects, I bet I've seen more of the country than many people who've spent their entire lives there. But there is one constant about every trip I've taken back there and that is that I always look forward to some awesome English food.

Now I realize for most Americans, the words "English food" conjures up images of singularly bland or offensive dishes; I think most people over here on the left side of the Atlantic think English people eat a mixture of tasteless gruel or a ton of organ meat in the form of kidney pie or blood sausage. I'm telling you right now anybody that thinks that way is dead wrong; you (and you know who you are) have no idea what you are talking about. The last sentence of the previous paragraph is NOT a typo. And to prove it, here are eight essential English foods I absolutely have to have each time I travel to Britain. 

1. Triangular Sandwiches

If there is one food my sister and I missed as soon as we realized what was what over here in the United States, it's triangular sandwiches. Fortunately for the American tourist in London, what started out as motorway rest stop to go fare and then migrated into national supermarket chains is now everywhere. What's the big deal you are wondering right? I mean these are packaged supermarket sandwiches, right? Well, yes. Sort of.

On a most basic level, these things are two pieces of square bread filled with some kind of protein, cut in half diagonally, stuffed into a triangular box and stuck on a shelf waiting for someone to buy them and eat them. But they are so much more than that. They are excellent for breakfast and lunch and probably for dinner as well if you want. They are super cheap and super tasty and the flavors are uniquely English. There's no ham and Swiss here. Try the bacon and egg or egg and cress for an inexpensive breakfast and the ploughman's or prawn mayonnaise (now made with responsibly sourced prawns at Sainsbury's) for lunch. Tuna and sweet corn, turkey and dressing, I could go on and on. These things are absolutely the best to go meals in the world.

There's only one thing that makes a triangular sandwich meal better and that's...

2. Crisps

I know what you are thinking: crisps are just potato chips, right? Well, yes and no. When we moved to the U.S. in 1979, we left behind a land that had crisps in about every flavor under the sun and came to a supposedly just as modern country with three flavors of potato chips: salted, barbeque and sour cream and onion. No beef, smoky bacon, roast chicken, salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, pickled onion or any other sorts of delicious flavors that potato chips should come in. I was devastated. Sure there were Doritos and Fritos and other sorts of corn chips but at 11 years old those all just tasted disgusting to me.

In the last 35 years, this country I now call home has made a lot of progress. Salt and vinegar chips are everywhere, sour cream and cheddar chips are amazing (especially Ruffles') and Utz makes possibly my favorite potato chips ever in their Carolina BBQ chips (my mouth is watering right now thinking about those things). But America still hasn't caught up to 1979 Britain in this regard. There have been some advances in crisps in England but the basic staples in Walker's, Hula Hoops and Monster Munch remain the same. My roast chicken crisps I had on this trip went well with my ploughman's triangular sandwiches in King's Cross Station (although not so well with the Ribena) and my Prawn Cocktail crisps (now with Vale of Evasham tomatoes) complemented my prawn mayonnaise triangular sandwiches on the sidewalk on the way to the Tower Bridge perfectly.

Take my advice here when you land in London. At the first opportunity you have, get yourself into a Tesco or M and S or Sainsbury's and get yourself a snack. You will never have anything better in snack foods.

Pie Minister's Moo & Blue pie with a side of buttery mash.

3. Pies

If the excellence of triangular sandwiches and crisps is a bit of a shock, hopefully you won't recoil when I say that the savory (or savoury if you will) pies in England are an essential meal when you spend any sort of time in the United Kingdom. Think chicken pot pie but way better and with way more choices. I don't know anyone in America that doesn't like chicken pot pie. The KFC pot pie commercial seems to rely solely on some dude repeating "pot pie" over and over again with nothing else of substance so that has to be an indicator of how good chicken pot pie is. My friend Bryan hates every sort of pie except chicken pot pie so there's that too. Now think better.

I spent nine nights in England earlier this month and I ate four whole savory pies and about a third of a fifth pie (don't think about that last one too hard). I can't get enough of these things (clearly) and neither should you if you want some outstanding English food when visiting. I'd recommend pubs as a starting point. You can't really go wrong. I still remember the ham and leek pie I had in some dark pub in Oxford in 2007 as one of the best things I've ever eaten. On this trip, I think the Duke of Wellington pub on London's Portobello Road had the best of the five pies I sampled in their summer chicken pie. Fuller's have a series of Ale and Pie pubs throughout London which are fantastic. The chicken and chorizo pie at the Jack Horner was pretty darned good, especially when paired with a Fuller's Porter.

Outside of pubs, I found Pie Minister's excellent Blue & Moo (steak with Stilton) pie at London's Borough Market on the south bank of the Thames just south of London Bridge. At a cost of only four pounds (with an extra pound for a side of buttery mash), this was probably the best value for money meal I had and it was almost as good as the Duke of Wellington's offering at three times the price. You can't go wrong with pies in England. Eat as many as possible is my advice. See if you can beat my rate next time you are there.

4. Fish and Chips

So this is obviously classic English fare, right? And you can probably find this meal in tons and tons of places over here Stateside. But I think it's worth a trip to a chippie while you are in England to see if what's made over here is the equal to the original. Sure, you can't actually get it wrapped in newspaper any more (someone figured out it was a health hazard or something), the classic cod is now scarce and it's really tempting to get a pie (see number 3 above) or a battered sausage (so good…) but if you can get past all that, go get yourself some fish and chips. 

On this trip, I actually didn't have enough time to get the classic fish and chips takeaway and eat it in the street (likely because I was eating too many pies) but I did manage to sample or eat fish and chips at least three times in the nine days I spent in England. If there was one  fish and chips pilgrimage we had to make in London, it was to Poppie's in Spitalfields, just at the north end of the Brick Lane area. Poppie's is regularly voted by critics and the public alike as one of the best places to get fish and chips in London. I got the cod here (a couple of extra quid over haddock) and it was probably the best fish and chips I've ever had. The flesh of the fish was so meaty and clean tasting and the batter was there to add crunch and a little flavor but not overwhelm the fish while also holding up to the copious amounts of malt vinegar I doused my dish with.

Poppie's is definitely worth a trip, but don't hesitate to go to your local chippie if you are in England. Just watch the bones sometimes (no bones at Poppies).

5. Curry

So I can't honestly say that curry is a childhood favorite that I've missed for years and years and seek out each time I go back to England. In fact, I have to say until last week or so, I had never had curry in England. But I know someone wiser than me (who happened to be with me on my recent trip) who insisted the best curry in the world is in London. So on that endorsement (and I consider her an authority on the subject), we blocked out two nights of curry meals on our packed itinerary.

Our plan was to head to the world famous Tayyab's restaurant the first full day we were in London and then wander down Brick Lane where there are over 40 curry restaurants to find some hole in the wall place by sight and smell for a second meal. Our plan didn't work. The meal we ate at Tayyab's was so good that we didn't go to another place for a second meal; we just went back to Tayyab's. The food was so good, in fact (Karahi Mutton (goat) Tikka Masala and a side of Chana to share) that I got the exact same thing two meals in a row.

It's difficult to express how good this food was. The goat meat was nothing overly special; it was tender sometimes and tough some other times as goat tends to be, but the sauce that came with the goat, a meaty spicy thick gravy was just fantastic. And the chickpeas in the chana were so soft and buttery that they just melted when you pressed them between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. They were honestly the best thing I ate in England in my week plus there (no jokes - remember the premise of this post) so I'm super glad I had them twice. I'm also super glad I had someone in my life to point me in the direction of curry while in London.

Now, just a word or four about Tayyab's based on our two nights there. First, don't expect good service. You will order on their schedule, not yours, even if it means you have to sit for five or ten minutes alone without any service. Second, don't bother making a reservation; in our experience it made no difference. I think the reservation thing there is a ruse. Third, unless you are a popadom freak, decline the popadoms they try to bring you at the beginning of the meal; they are not free and they aren't as good as other stuff on the menu. Fourth, go, relax and enjoy and don't get upset with the service; the food is so worth it.

6. Sticky Toffee Pudding

Just like curry, sticky toffee pudding is not a food of my childhood that I pine for. In fact, I think the first time I had sticky toffee pudding was within the last 10 years or so. In England, it seems to be everywhere. And that's a really good thing because it's freaking amazing.

Pudding in England is not the same thing as pudding in the United States. My friend Bryan (yes, the same one who hates almost all pies) detests pudding; he would not detest sticky toffee pudding. Sticky toffee pudding is a piece of sponge cake like stuff saturated in and surrounded by a rich caramel-molasses sauce with, in the best establishments, a touch of cream or scoop of ice cream to cut the richness of the sauce. Yes, that's right, ice cream or heavy cream is used to cut the richness. Think about that.

This stuff is absolutely delicious and I recommend sharing, if only because your cholesterol will have been raised by the end of the eating. It's filling and unctuous (in a good way) and rich and salty and sweet from the sauce. It's absolutely the perfect way to finish an English meal. I'd eat this stuff every day if I thought it was remotely good for me and I knew where to get it in the D.C. metropolitan area.

7. Blackcurrant Flavored Anything

Growing up English, by far one of our favorite flavors of anything was blackcurrant flavor. With my unsophisticated palate it's difficult for me to articulate the flavor of blackcurrant but it's sweet, acidic (which I love) and intensely dark fruit like. Think cherries but way deeper and richer. Just thinking about it is making me crave some Ribena. 

When we moved to the United States, we assumed we would be able to keep eating blackcurrant stuff, whether that be drinks, candy (most mixed fruit candies in England - like Fruit Pastilles or Fruit Gums - featured blackcurrant which always got saved for last), or jams. So imagine our surprise when we got here and realized what we had done by emigrating from England. I'm sure this was not a high priority for my parents who were trying to make ends meet but it was huge for me. It was absolutely devastating. In effect, we had moved to a country where our beloved blackcurrant sweets were swapped out for disgusting grape candy. Ugh!

I know most of the 12 or so people who will ever read this are thinking "I love grape" but you are wrong. You don't love grape. The American fake grape flavor is awful. Find something blackcurrant flavored, even if you have to go all the way across the Atlantic and get some. Any trip to England for me is a chance to get reacquainted with blackcurrants and I'm never disappointed. I have a jar of Farrah's Blackcurrant Preserves with me from this trip that is going to be enjoyed on homemade biscuits a lot of Sundays this fall.

Eating a Milky Bar at Hammersmith Tube station.

8. Milky Bar and Crunchie

My adjustment to American candy bars in 1979 was a little similar to my acclimation to potato chips when we arrived in this country, although honestly there were some real positives to the place we now called home in this department. After we got over the confusing re-naming of candy bars (Three Musketeers is Milky Way in England, Milky Way is Mars and Mars is Topic, if that makes any sense) and then got beyond the deliciousness close to godliness that is the juxtaposition of peanut butter and chocolate, we started to notice what was missing.

Over the last 35 years, the candy situation has largely sorted itself out. There's been some sort of harmonization, more in the direction of U.S. candy bars going to England than the other way around (except in duty free shops at the airport which is the best of both worlds) but the candy perspective is largely the same in both countries. The exceptions worth noting for me are Milky Bar and Crunchie, so the bag of decaffeinated tea I was bringing back for my mom like a cocaine hauling human mule from South America, contained two Milky Bars and three Crunchies (there's one of each left now after five days back here).

Milky Bars are just a bar of white chocolate. Nothing fancier than that. But I've always loved white chocolate and I can't get the same thing here, unless I go gourmet. I appreciate Hershey's intruding the Cookies and Cream candy bars a couple of decades ago but they are not the same thing. Crunchies on the other hand are unique: rich milk chocolate wrapped around a crunchy (duh…) densified honeycomb like center. I could eat these things all day and have loved them just the same since I was a kid. Sure there are other English candy bars unavailable here but Milky Bars and Crunchies are the best for me. Bringing some back from overseas for me will always get you some points in my book.

So that's what I have to say about English food. If you are not convinced by now of the genius of British cuisine then I don't really have any other convincing to do. Just do me a favor and go find out for yourself and then come back and tell me I'm off base. I'm missing this stuff already.

Footy

If you know anything about spectator sport on this planet we live on, you likely understand that football or association football (to distinguish it from rugby football) or soccer (in America) is far and away the most popular sport on the planet. It is played by over 250 million people in more than 200 countries and the every four years World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world each year it is held.

If you know a little more than anything about spectator sport, you will also likely understand that the game of football as it exists today is mostly English. I say mostly English because people the world over have been playing games similar to football for centuries. But the modern game is mostly English for two reasons. First, a game pretty similar to today's game can be traced back more than 1,000 years on the island of Britain. And secondly, and more importantly, the modern rules of football which established the modern game were codified in English public schools in the middle of the 19th century. Today, England's Barclay's Premier League is the most popular football league in the world where, generally speaking, the best football players in the world ply their trade. Now if England could only stand a chance every so often of competing in the World Cup…but that's a different story.

Despite the game's origins in the country where I was born and halfway raised, I had never to the best of my knowledge and memory in my first forty six years on this planet attended a professional football match in England. I say to the best of my knowledge and memory because my dad swears he took me to some matches in the 1970s but I cannot for the life of me remember anything to do with that. He's likely right, but I still don't remember. So one of my goals for my recent trip to England was to correct that situation and take in my first professional football match in the best league in the world.

Queuing. The tickets said get there 90 minutes ahead of time to avoid a queue. We did and we couldn't.

Vacations for me involve careful and a whole lot of planning and I knew I wouldn't have the luxury of waiting until the Barclay's Premier League schedule was released to buy a plane ticket at a reasonable cost. But I knew I would be spending most of my time during this vacation in London where there are six Premier League teams. So I picked a span of days covering two weekends and booked a flight. I figured there had to be at least one game on at least one weekend that worked for me and I could figure the rest out later.

I was almost wrong. The second weekend I picked for my trip (last weekend as it turns out) was reserved for qualifying games for the 2016 European Championship so there were no Premier League games at all that weekend. That left me with a choice between three London home teams on the Saturday of my arrival to choose from: Queen's Park Rangers, West Ham United or Tottenham Hotspur. Fortunately, the Premier League stepped in and made my choice easy; they moved Saturday's Tottenham v. Liverpool game to Sunday, giving me a little breathing room in my schedule and not requiring me to rush directly from the airport to a match. An early morning rise for a 9:30 am ticket sale (4:30 am here in Arlington, VA) about a month before my vacation and I was on my way to the game for my first English football experience.

From a  matchup perspective, the Tottenham / Liverpool meeting was about the best I could have hoped for. It looked like it would be a close, competitive affair between two really good teams. Liverpool finished second in the Premier League the previous season and Tottenham ended up four spots further down the table, a respectable sixth overall. Both teams have had recent success but also have impressive histories. Liverpool boasts 18 First Division Championships (the precursor to the current Premier League) and seven F.A. Cups. Tottenham has only two First Division Championships but bests Liverpool with eight F.A. Cups. Both teams are expected to challenge for the Premier League title this year and Tottenham came into the contest as one of only three undefeated teams in the League and fresh off a 4-0 thrashing of cross-town rivals Queen's Park Rangers (or QPR for short).

In addition to the past accomplishments of both teams, the actual history of both clubs stretches back into the 1800s. Their success started shortly after each club was founded. Liverpool won its first First Division championship in 1901, just seven years after it was founded. That same year, Tottenham won its first F.A. Cup, 19 years after it first took to the pitch in 1882. Compare that history to two of the major U.S. sports leagues and there's a real sense of respect due these two franchises: the NFL began play in 1920; the NBA was founded in 1946. Both these clubs pre-date two of our most popular leagues.

Ethnic diversity: Latin American, African and Turkish businesses side by side by side.

In addition to the history represented by both clubs that Sunday afternoon, the game was being played at Tottenham's home ground, White Hart Lane, which is itself an historic place to watch sport. Tottenham has been playing at the ground since 1899, although it looked significantly different back then than it does now. When White Hart Lane was founded, the seating consisted of some temporary stands relocated from their prior playing ground. The place started being built up from there which is different than what we see in the United States, where stadiums or arenas are built from the ground up in one construction project. The initial phase of construction at White Hart Lane took about six years with the construction of main stands that held about 60,000 people, mostly standing. Since 1905, construction has continued seemingly without stopping. Pieces of the stadium have been filled in, demolished and rebuilt in the 1920s, 1930s, 1980s and 1990s.

At its peak capacity, White Hart Lane held about 80,000 fans. Today, with the implementation of fixed seating everywhere, it holds a little more than 36,000. The team is in the process of building a brand new super-deluxe stadium directly to the north of the current ground but for me, the prospect of seeing a match in a place as historic as the current home was thrilling. I've seen a lot of sporting events in the United States, but I don't think I've ever watched an event in a stadium started in the 1800s. Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and the Yale Bowl all come pretty close but they are all at least 13 years younger than White Hart Lane.

The stadium today sits in a tightly packed neighborhood, which I love as an immediate distinction from stadiums I have visited in the United States, which mostly tend to be in suburban locations surrounded by seas of parking. It didn't always used to be that way in America; before the 1960s there were a number of downtown stadiums for football and baseball but despite a recent trend of baseball parks and smaller arenas for basketball and hockey moving back into urban neighborhoods, the truly large stadiums (typically for American Football) in the United States remain isolated automobile access only fields.

Automobile access at White Hart Lane just doesn't work. Most fans going to a match travel by the London Underground (or Tube) and our journey there was no exception. After a stroll through Hyde Park and a bacon bap breakfast sitting beside the Serpentine, we made our way to the Victoria line to the Seven Sisters station and began our slightly less than half hour uphill walk along High Road to the ground. Being a tourist in London often isolates you from some of the more colorful neighborhoods in the city so a trip out to Tottenham definitely got us into a part of London that I likely never would have seen if I hadn't been going to the game.

The stores and businesses lining High Road are varied and unique but almost all of them cater to different nationalities. It is obvious that the neighborhood is a mixture of immigrants from different backgrounds which is a great change of pace from the London city center. On the way to the stadium we passed Polish, African, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Eastern European restaurants and stores with unique service offerings. The oddest might have been the place that specialized in sending goods back and forth to Ghana (no where else - just Ghana) and the overall makeup of the street was summed up nicely by a sign hanging outside the Solictors.com storefront advertising free immigration advice.

Built over time - White Hart Lane packed into the neighborhood looking decidedly un-homogeneous.

As you approach the stadium on match day, the sidewalks and roads become more and more packed and you see more fans in Tottenham kits. If you are not careful and if you are completely ignoring the throngs of fans everywhere, you could almost walk right past the ground. White Hart Lane is set back a little off High Road, almost hidden behind the shops lining the street on the east side of the road. The main vehicular access to the small stadium parking lot is down tiny Bill Nicholson Way, named after the famous manager who guided the team to 11 championships in his tenure with the club. The parking lot provides a little separation for the west side of the ground back off High Road but the other three sides are packed tight to the surrounding neighborhood.

Entrance to the stadium is via a series of small doors on the perimeter of the ground which lead to stairs which carry you up efficiently to your assigned seating area. There are no grand interior concourses; the streets outside the stadium serve that purpose. Once you pass the small cages with a ticket scanner locked inside (likely a holdover from more dangerous times at English football grounds), there is no wasted space at all inside the park. The stairs and tunnels push you directly to where you need to be to watch the match. The spaces are tight and controlled until you finally emerge from the tunnels and find the expansive manicured green pitch laid out before you, surrounded on all four sides by two tiered stands with blue seats.

Our seats were located in the southeast corner of the upper tier which gave us a great view of the entire pitch. Although it was admittedly difficult to see clearly what was happening at the goal mouth at the opposite end of the stadium, the view at our end was perfect. Despite its size, the place is really pretty intimate. We were seated about six rows from the top of the stadium but we were really close. Just like the interior tunnels of the stands, the space around the pitch was used super efficiently. The two tiers of stands are built right on top of each other; the seats are tight at either side and in front and in back of you; and the distance between the touchlines and the stands is as small as it can be while still functioning as a stadium. It promised to be a great atmosphere to watch a sporting event.

One of the things I was looking forward to the most about this match was the atmosphere created by the crowd, and in particular the singing that English football fans are famous for. Unlike in the United States, where fans buy the best available ticket in any section to go watch a game, English football fans are segregated into home and away sections. It's a decades old tradition that I imagine started due to the close proximity of cities in England and was preserved through the practical necessity to keep rival fans away from each other when football matches served as excuses for hooligans to get drunk and fight the other team's supporters.

Those hooliganism days are long since past but the tradition remains. At White Hart Lane, the home supporters occupy a little more than 95% of the stands that circle the pitch and the away supporters are confined to a small area in the southwest corner of the park, easily identifiable by the slightly futuristic prison looking police watch tower hanging from the stadium roof right above their seats. That section filled up first on the day of our match and sure enough, the Liverpool fans broke into song first, likely buoyed by their being packed in tight in enemy territory.

Before kickoff though, the Spurs fans filled in the remaining empty seats in the home stands and started singing their own songs, which are really adaptations of traditional or public domain songs into football themed anthems. Tottenham's traditional anthems are "Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur" set to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "When the Spurs Go Marching In" set to "When the Saints Go Marching In". Their fans also have a sort of slow dirge where they chant "Come On You Spurs" several times over. Those words, in addition to other phrases that reference the history of the club and particularly legendary manager Bill Nicholson, are posted around the stadium perimeter. I attend a lot of sporting events in the United States each year and the tradition and support hits you in the face at White Hart Lane and it's absolutely wonderful. Electronically encouraged chants of "Let's Go Wizards!" don't come close to what happens at Tottenham's ground every week. We have a lot to learn.

After all that buildup, unfortunately the game happened. The hoped for close contest between two contenders ended up being nothing of the sort. Liverpool turned out to be the better team by far on that Sunday afternoon. They were more aggressive, faster, controlled the ball better and were way more surgical in their attacks. Whenever Liverpool controlled the ball they moved quickly; the Spurs looked at least one step slower each time they were being attacked and when they finally got control of the ball, their runs were one on one or one on many affairs. There was no passing, no runs down the sidelines and no real chance to score (no scoring by the home team is exactly what happened). I can't tell you how many times a Tottenham player started a run in the midfield, only to find his opponent getting back faster and making him pull up, stop the ball and try to dribble around his defender. It didn't work.

Seven minutes into the first half, Liverpool scored and the crowd became noticeably deflated (well, except for the southwest corner of the ground). The chanting and singing stopped and despite hanging on that 0-1 deficit until half time, the prospect of the home team scoring looked bleak. I hoped maybe the second half would be better but a score came even quicker in that half on a ridiculous penalty call just two minutes in; the Liverpool player was touched gently on the arm and fell down instantly and unfortunately the referee fell for it. 2-0. The rest of the game was an exercise in futility and Liverpool's third goal, a beautiful run from midfield that left Spurs defenders looking far more than a step slow, sealed the home team's fate for the day. About five minutes before time, the home faithful started heading for the exits. And in the southwest corner of the stadium, that remained noticeably red (Liverpool's color), you could hear the crowd singing Liverpool's anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone".

I wore my brand new Spurs kit to the game (see the first photo above) but I can't say I'm a die hard Tottenham fan by any stretch of the imagination. My expectations were high for this game and I can't say I was totally satisfied with the experience. It's just too bad that the visiting team took the home crowd out of the game so early. But I have to tell you being a fan of the New York Jets and Washington Wizards, I often leave games disappointed. So I'm glad I went and I feel like I have now experienced something quintessentially English that I had missed in my youth. As we exited the stadium we heard one fan say "You can't play bloody QPR every week!" Nope, you can't. Maybe the next time I go I should pick a weaker opponent. Come on you Spurs!

The end of the match - the blue you see is empty seats; the red is Liverpool supporters.