I had visited London as a child, but remember very little of it, apart from mild recollections of the lion statues and pigeons from Trafalgar Square. Flash-forward 21 years later and I’m returning with my parents, but this time the crowd had been added to – 3 siblings and 2 girlfriends leaving a total of 8 Irish in London.
The purpose of our trip was to attend Crystal Palace vs. Manchester City, with me being a City fan and my brother Turlough taking a liking to Crystal Palace after playing as them on FIFA. But rather than travel over purely for the football match and come back, we decided to make a weekend out of it and squeeze in all the sights as well.
We got a taxi bus from Gatwick airport to Penge (a nice area in South London within walking distance of Selhurst Park, the Crystal Palace Stadium). We arrived very late that night, and pretty much went straight to sleep. We rose early the next morning – and went to The Moon & The Stars pub for breakfast (it’s the Wetherspoons in Penge). To tell the truth, Wetherspoons was a recurring theme of my time in London. A quick train ride into Victoria Station and then underground from there, quickly had us zipped into the necessary parts of London. The underground was very easy to navigate; and you didn’t even need to buy tickets – a bank card sufficed, and a daily cap on ticket prices made zooming around the city affordable.
We first sight to see was Trafalgar Square to reacquaint me with the lions, though the pigeons have since moved on (to be fair, after Milan I had enough of pigeons). We were able to plan a walk around most of the sights that interested us, we detoured through Leicester Square and Chinatown before ending up at the Queen’s residence (which she rarely actually lives in)
The lion must be behind bars after scaring all the pigeons away
We then walked to Westminster and pretty much upon our arrival, the clouds opened up and it began pouring rain. There were multiple Brexit protests occurring around Westminster, some shouting about reclaiming sovereignty, and others exclaiming they were European and wanted to remain so – it reminded me of mini-Europe in Brussels where they had installed a Brexit protest outside of the Westminster building.
After posing with statues of our heroes, we then got up close and personal to extravagant (taxpayer funded) Parliament buildings.
Sadly the Big Ben was undergoing a face lift, so I couldn’t see beyond the scaffolding surround the clock. The Albert Clock in Belfast will have to suffice for now.
After Westminster we tried to take a peek of 10 Downing Street, however it’s closed off – the best we could see was the Chancellor of the exchequer house. The rain had then gotten to unbearable levels, so we took embrace on Lord Moon of the Mall (yep, you guessed it – another Wetherspoons pub) until it dried up a little.
Around this point the group split in 2, with one half of us heading to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, whilst my Dad and brother Liam went to the war museum.
I had seen images of the Tower of London, but felt it was different in real life, the sun had came out and we walked around the outer wall of the Tower right along the Thames (as we didn’t want to pay in, seeing the outside of it had us happy enough). After the Tower, we (yes, again – and no, I don’t have a problem) went to a nearby Wetherspoons and relaxed.
My Mum and siblings left after the first drink, and me and Amy stayed on for another while. Shortly after we got the subway back to Victoria Station and coincidentally bumped into my Dad and Liam. We decided whilst there, we should wait for the other 4 (in the Wetherspoons that’s in Victoria Station).
After reconvening we travelled back to Penge.
The next morning was game day. We grabbed breakfast and had a few pre-match drinks to settle the nerves.
Upon entry to Selhurst Park, I got a round of Eagle IPA for everybody. I quite liked the Crystal Palace home brew (though my Dad was the only other of the group to tolerate it, so I ended up drinking most of the round myself). We took our seats, and were 3 or 4 rows back from the pitch amongst the home fans. I won’t bore you with the details of a game that City won 1-3, but I was thrilled to see some of my favourite players, including
David Silva, Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Leroy Sané, Raheem Sterling and captain fantastic Vincent Kompany who departed a few months later.
After the game we walked back to our hotel and caught a taxi back to the airport. A thorough enjoyable, efficient and productive weekend break to London.
Disclaimer: I was not sponsored by Wetherspoons to write this entry (though if Tim Martin fancies chucking me a few quid, he can be my guest)
