Europe 2023, August 20

Set an early alarm yet again for a morning run and hoped to be back in time for breakfast this time. This was my first time running at Regent's Park instead of Hyde Park, it was alright but definitely not as good, and had to spent more time on the streets to get there.

Got back around 8am and the breakfast area was already packed, I don't know why everyone is in such a rush on the weekend. I'm actually not sure if I had breakfast included in my room fee, was pretty sure it was but nobody was asking on the way in. Since I won't have around for breakfast the other two days I guess it's about break even either way...

Had a booking for Natural History Museum at 11am and from reports online there's actually a separate queue for booked visitors for this one. However all of the recent reviews online were complaining the museum was too packed and had poor ventilation, so I was considering my other options.

The women's world cup final was also on at 11am, not the best local time but I decided to watch some of it since England was playing. As I mentioned previously there was not a host of live event sites like you might expect.

I had a bit of time before the match was due to start so walked around near Kings Cross and St Pancras, got some food and drinks and came back to the hotel to watch the game. It was a defensive first half, Spain had most of the possession and scored the only goal. The second half didn't even have any goals, even though England played a bit better. It was quite disappointing being in England and they couldn't win the world cup final at the time.

For the afternoon I had official tickets for the West Ham game, so had no concerns this time with getting in. The options were paper ticket or import into your Google Wallet, so I went with the second option.

The match was at London Stadium which is not that close to the nearest stop at Stratford station, but still a much shorter walk than for the Tottenham game. Checking my Oyster Card status on the way I found I had spent about 80 pounds (160 dollars) for 5 full days and another 3 half days, quite expensive. Some of those days included a lot of trips and reached the 15 pound daily cap, which is still quite expensive for one day of city travel.

On the way to the game while changing trains I got out and had a quick lap around Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral, then back on the train and out at Stratford near the Westfield Shopping Centre.

Like yesterday I just followed the crowd to the game through some restaurant and entertainment district, it wasn't possible to go the wrong way. I got to the game a bit after 3pm, but I have no idea why everyone else turns up way too early for these games. Basically everyone just stands around outside  the stadium drinking beer and getting in the way of people trying to move around and getting inside. I saw another huge line for the team shop again, again no idea why it's so popular, people must enjoying standing in line.

I had a reasonable seat towards the front of the upper deck, the stadium is not as big as Tottenham so it's much closer to the action. There wasn't too much happening before the game except near they end they hand some orchestra playing instrumental songs like Sweet Caroline, they should have started earlier.

The game got going and West Ham stole a quick lead, then Chelsea controlled possession and equalised. West Ham got another surprise goal early in the second half but then got a player sent off with a red card and had hold on for the last 25 minutes.

The sun came down to an annoying level during the second half, I would have benefited from bringing a hat or sunglasses if I had known. I left with about 2 minutes of the 90 to go, running back to the station I passed thousands walking who must have left much earlier than that, at least 10 minutes. Checking the score on my phone I saw that West Ham had been lucky to pick up a third goal through a penalty during injury time.

So that's it for part two of London, back to the hotel to pack up for the train trip into Belgium early in the morning. Just not looking forward to having TV without English language for more than a week.