Wimbledon and London

Stayed at the Southwark Rose for two nights then moved to the Hilton Paddington. Two fine hotels. Nothing terribly special about them. No breakfasts included. Had dinner Sunday night at the Slug and Lettuce in Southwark. Was a big plate of fried things that were prety good. Had much better food including tapas at Brindisa in Bourogh Market and Vinology across the street. Also had good food at my Mom's hotel, the Zetter. The Hilton had the largest rooms of the three hotels. Watched a number of the World Cup round of 16 games including the 0-0 snoozefest that Ukraine won over Switzerland on penalties when the Swiss failed to score. Awful like that UCLA/Memphis Elite Eight game last year. I did talk to a guy the next night during Spain/France who turned 3 pounds into 178 with a parlay betting on the Ukraine/Swiss game to be awful.

Went to Wimbledon with the tickets from the lottery on Monday morning. It was cloudy and after 35 min of watching Kim Clisters it started to rain. We had great seats in the first row behind her coaches' box so we stuck around for a few hours hoping play would resume, but it never did. Very disappointing. Wimbledon was impressive as far as the courts, but the merchandise was weak and for a place that gets a lot of rain, there weren't many areas to stay dry. Oh well. I'll try again sometime in the future. Did make it to the Tate Modern for a mix of good strange art and bad strange art. They did have Steiglitz's "Steerage" in the photo exhibit which was interesting to see in person.

Instead of taking the tube to Heathrow for about $12, I opted to have lunch and a pint and take the $26 Heathrow Express. Figured I had only paid $50 for my LHR-MAN ticket and it was kind worth it. Hoped to find less tourists in Manchester before heading back to the US.