I slept quite well during the night and woke up around eight. We had planned a slow morning so I got up, took a shower, and then went to the same cafe as yesterday to buy some breakfast. We left the apartment at about 11 to get some lunch from Kozan, the same place as last night. Google said they would open at 10:30 but when we got there the doors were locked. We checked a couple of more locations close by but they were either full, closed, or didn’t have proper food. So we headed towards the overground to make our way to Wembley and find some food along the way.
more fancy than others.
We took the train to Finchley Road & Frognal (some peculiar names on the stations here) and started walking towards the station we would continue our journey from while looking for something to eat. Everything seemed closed, being Sunday most places opened at 12), but we found a small mall with Nando’s Swiss Cottage in it, which has chicken in different shapes and sizes.
It took some time before we got seated, and even longer before we realized that we should order via a QR code or at the teller. I got my burger first, which could have been mistaken for a breakfast muffin at McDonald’s. It was decent though so no real complaints. When Martin got his salad, and Håkan his wings I had already finished my meal.
We left the restaurant and went onto the subway, Metropolitan line, which was quite full already but it was only one stop (although a bit long). Lots of people were going to Wembley based on all the different jerseys on the train, and it was confirmed when we arrived at Wembley Park Station. When we got out of the station, it was quite the view, seeing the big arena on top of a long slope. A slope filled with people.
We climbed the slope and started to look for the official NFL Shop. We found the queue, one staffer said it was about 20 minutes in line. And she was correct, after 20 minutes we reached the safety checkpoint Then we had another 25 minutes in line before we could enter the store itself. We were almost the last people to enter the crowded shop. It was a much better assortment than what we found in the store at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium two years ago. The line to pay and exit was quite long but went rather quickly, probably because they had about 50 cashier stations. Håkans card payment wouldn’t go through so I had to bail him out 🙂
We exited the store and moved towards the entrance because it was just about 15 minutes until kickoff and I was afraid of more queues. Except for the store exit being on the opposite side of our desired entrance there were no issues and just before the national anthem we sat down in our seats on the 13th row, section 128.
It was exciting to see another NFL game live. It was a bit difficult to see everything that was happening since we sat pretty far down, but on the other hand, we got pretty close to some action. The biggest issue was that five out of the six touchdowns occurred in the end zone on the opposite side of the field. We got one at least, in the end.
It’s fun to interact with other spectators around us. The guys behind us really liked when we tried to take photos through my binoculars. Four guys cheering for four different teams. One thing that I haven’t seen before, but I expect to happen at every game, was that during the last timeout, the referees took time to shake hands and thank the different volunteers that manned the equipment on the sidelines. I love such things!
At 17:20 the game was over, Jaguars beat Patriots 32-16 in front of 86 651 people. We started to make our way back to the subway station, along with like everyone else. The promenade from the stadium was filled with people and there were staff at regular intervals to create space between blocks of people and in such a way control the flow into the station. Overall this worked pretty well and after an hour from the game was over, we were standing on a train towards the city center again.
We changed at the same station as earlier in the day and at around 19 we were back “home” and ordered dinner at Kozan, which now was open. We ended the evening with food, beer/soda, chips, and the Packers game (we won by 24-22!) followed by the F1 race. And writing a blog post of course 🙂
