Final Friendly Game in London
4/1/2009 12:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
- by Laurie Wilkins and Allison Kittelberger
Today was a bittersweet day seeing as we have to go home tomorrow. This morning we had our final game of the tour against Bracknell. We had an early start and were off by 8:30 to our game. It was a new experience as we played on sand turf. This is a different from the water based field we have at Kent. It slowed the game down a bit at first, but after a halftime reality check we picked things up and came out with a 6-0 win.
After the game we had a nice lunch with the other team before heading off for our final day in London. We had the entire afternoon to ourselves and were able to continue sightseeing or shopping. Some of the girls went to see the sights but because we had spent a lot of yesterday touring Parliament and West Minster Abbey, we decided to spend the day on Oxford and Regents Street shopping.
We had our first experience of taking the Tube. The line we needed to take was closed for the day so we had to re-route. When we finally made it to our destination our first stop was Lillywhites, which is a 6 storey sports store.
We then made our way down Regents Street, which has all the top designers like Burberry, Gucci, United Colors of Benetton etc. We ended up on Oxford Street - which is the main shopping street in London.
After we finished our shopping we decided to try to walk back thinking it would only take 20 minutes. We found a nice gentleman on the street who kindly told us to walk in the opposite direction. This was when we decided to take our first London taxi! We got dropped off at what we thought was the right spot - but it wasn't. We walked the entire way around Victoria Train station stopping to use a pay phone and then a woman's cell phone when we finally found our team sitting at the side of the road. Turned out we weren't the only people running late - nearly half the team and coaches were!
Tomorrow is Bryn's birthday, so tonight we will have a nice birthday dinner in England and then head back to the U.S. bright and early. Thanks for reading our blog! It's been a great trip and experience :-)
Alli and Laurie
