I ended up in London for four days most because it was cheaper to fly to Iceland from there than the US. This was before the whole Iceland travel boom happened, and no one was advertising $199 tickets from NYC to Reykjavik yet. I arrived on a Friday night and was supposed to fly out the next morning, so I had absolutely no plans. When I got to my hostel room, there was only one other person, who happened to be American! It was actually pretty rare for me to meet a fellow American while traveling, and we soon struck up a conversation. It turned out that it was actually his first trip out of the country, and he chose England because he was a big soccer fan and wanted to see some matches (another strange phenomenon, to meet an American who likes soccer more than football!). There was an Arsenal match that night and he was meeting some mates at a pub near the stadium, and I, with no other plans, did not need much prodding to join.
We got on the Picadilly Line and it was apparent that half the passengers were headed to the stadium. There was some construction and the Arsenal stop was not in service, and as we got off, my new friend admitted that he was not able to reach his mates and had no idea which pub they were at. Since we didn’t know where we were supposed to go, we just followed the massive crowd towards the stadium while figuring out what to do, and a scalper opportunely appeared in front of us offering some premium box seats. We said no and kept on walking, but at this point, I’ve been quite pulled into the excitement of it all and decided it would be quite disappointing to turn back. I asked my new friend, “why don’t we just go to the game?”
After some cajoling, he reluctantly agreed, and I bargained with the scalper to get the tickets at what I thought was a reasonable price. My friend was super nervous about getting fake tickets, but was sold on the idea of free beer that came with them. Thankfully, our tickets worked and we were led to quite decent seats (and yes, we got our free beer too!). I can’t quite remember the game itself to be honest, but just the atmosphere of being there was super exciting, especially since it was my first ever soccer match!
I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes you just have make a few bold choices and accept a few random invitations. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
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