Fuqua Friday!!! (and Thursday and Saturday too)

First, I owe everyone an apology. I've fallen behind a bit on my posts and have gone almost 3 weeks without posting. Shame on me.

But, I am back on it now and will be updating this at least once per week from here on out. Here we go!

A lot of our posts here are about the big trips we take and the amazing experiences we are having. But, for us, one of the most enjoyable things of all is when we get to see our friends. Luckily, London is an easy place to visit and we're had a fairly steady stream of family and friends stop by. A couple weeks ago, it was our friends Sadia and Meleata. Now, this wasn't a planned trip. Sadia was coming for work and to visit some friends here, and Meleata was passing through on her way to Barcelona for a conference. It was just good luck that they would be here at the same time. Likelihood of shenanigans was quite high.

Since Meleata hadn't been to London before, we spent part of the trip bouncing around to the typical London sights.

Riding the tube

The Borough Market

Walking along the River Thames

The Tower of London and the Tower Bridge

Big Ben, Parliament, & Westminster Abbey 

The London Eye

Buckingham Palace

Kensington Palace

All of London at once! That's how you do it.

Also, since we had multiple Fuquans in town, we HAD to have our own version of Fuqua Friday! So we got Sadia & Meleata (both class of 2011), our new neighbors Erica Gellerman (class of 2012) & her husband Jordan (Cross Continent Class of 2013), Matt Diffey (class of 2013) & his wife Teddy (sorry about the spelling!), and we all headed over to the Troubador Cafe for a drink or 10. If you're ever in London, check out the Troubador. It's a cool little cafe/restaurant/bar, with live music in the basement. Apparently lots of big name acts play here (Adele, Rolling Stones, etc). But I digress.... we had a blast at the bar, and then of course we took the party back to our place to watch some FuquaVision (where we were joined by Albert Hammond - Class of 2011).

The FV viewing crew

It was a great night, and it was so much fun reliving a bit of Fuqua with our friends.

Despite the whirlwind of sightseeing and shenanigans, there was still one thing we neglected: football. Proper British football. You see, Meleata and her family are fans of "the beautiful game" (as her husband Hassan likes to say), so we had to go see something related to the Premiership. As it turns out, we were able to visit both Stamford Bridge (home to Chelsea FC) and Emirates Stadium (home to Arsenal FC) on the same day.

Not only that, it was game day so there were people all over the town!

The crowd walking to Emirates Stadium

It was pretty interesting to see the differences in the atmosphere and crowds for the two teams. At Chelsea, it felt very posh. There are Audi's on display outside the stadium and it's basically what you'd expect in a higher end neighborhood like Chelsea. On the other hand, Arsenal felt rugged, blue collar, and I got the impression these were proper British football fans. The kind who would gladly have a pint with you if you support their team, or punch you in the face if you don't. Ok maybe that last part is an exaggeration, but it definitely had a rowdier feel to it and it was fun to see.

It was a great few days with our friends in town, and we are already looking forward to our next visitors. Come one, come all!