We grabbed dinner before the game at a place called Nandos. If you are ever in London, you will see these everywhere. It’s a chain here (and a few other places I think) that specializes in Brazilian/Portuguese style chicken. So basically like rotisserie chicken with varying amounts of spice. And it is definitely a thing here. During orientation they even brought it up; apparently when locals talk about Nandos, they’ll ask their friends if they want a “cheeky Nandos.” So of course I knew I had to try it at some point and I hadn’t actually had it yet so what better meal than a pre-football game meal to try out the classic chicken restaurant haha. Here’s what I got.
This was the 1/4 chicken, and it came with 2 sides. I carbed up here haha but you could also get stuff like fries (chips), rice, coleslaw, side salad, or peas. For 7 pounds, it was a pretty good meal!! I had them do the mildest spice/flavor which tasted perfectly fine to me, but they have a scale sort of like Buffalo Wild Wings that you could work your way up if you prefer to sweat while you eat. So if you’re not feeling super adventurous with your food but you still wanna eat like a local come here 
After dinner, we hopped on the tube for our long ride out to Wembley Stadium. The place was packed – I’m pretty sure it was a sold-out game.
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| From the tube station, you can already see the flood of people going in. |
We walked allllll the way around to the back and up to our entrance gate. We’re talking long lines everywhere that didn’t seem to be moving. At one point, a guard came over and announced that they were going to start letting people in from the A and B gate (we were at the C gate) because there were no lines so everyone rushed over. We were kind of at the back anyway so we headed over to the B gate. In order to get in, you put your ticket into this box to scan it so that the turnstile will open for you; it wasn’t being physically manned by someone. Apparently the message had not been given to the machines that we could get in by a different gate because it denied our entry. So back to the C gate we went, which at this point had much lighter lines because people had not caught on that you could only get in through your specific gate, no matter what the guard had been saying. Overall it worked in our favor because we ended up getting in much quicker than we probably would have. Gotta love the chaos of big events like this!
Once we got in, we marched all the way to our seats at the top, proudly wearing our England football scarves that we had just bought on the way in (because how could you not??). The stadium was HUGE. It seats 90,000 people, which for reference, seats more than a lot of NFL and college football stadiums back home. (Ok I looked it up just for fun and it’s in the top 20 for largest sports stadiums in the world.) Haha you get it, the place is big.
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| Yay England! Go Three Lions!! |
There was a guy in our section that kept trying to lead the wave and it was so funny because he was so adamant about it. We did it several times throughout the game and at one point we made it over halfway around the entire stadium! It was kind of cool to watch it make its way around the upper half of the stadium!
As for the game itself, it was honestly not that exciting haha. It ended 0-0 which apparently was decent for “a recovering English team” against a team like Brazil who had its star players in the whole time. Regardless, the atmosphere was still really fun, and now I have a team to cheer for at the coming World Cup (sorry US National Team).
We actually ended up leaving in like the 85th minute – I knew that it would be INSANE trying to leave this place, even if we waited until the 90th minute before they put the extra playing time on. At the time I felt kind of bad since it was a tie game and I didn’t want to miss a big score, but getting out before 2am was a bigger concern for me haha. I’m so glad we did. While we were definitely one of the first to leave our section, others in different sections had the same idea and it was still pretty crowded leaving the stadium. Then, police started making holding points; the tube station is specifically for the stadium and even though it's still a 10-15 minute walk straight down the sidewalk, it was so packed that they had to stop people at different points because the tube station was actually at capacity! Lucky for us we only had to wait at the base of the stairs to the station, but for those that left later, they were started to hold them at different points along the sidewalk as well. Inside the tube station was still a madhouse because everyone has to wait in line to tap in with their Oyster card and then make their way to their specific platform. We got pretty luck because a train showed up right when we got to the platform and we even got seats so we didn’t have to stand the whole way back. From leaving our seats in the stadium to actually getting back to our local tube stop, it only took 30-40 minutes which was actually pretty good considering the crowds. I’m sure if we had waited, it would have taken 1-2 hours!!
And that just about wraps up that night! I’m so glad I got to go to another football/soccer game. I really do enjoy watching sports and back home going to football games in the fall is one of my favorite parts of college, so it was really nice to be able to be in that atmosphere and also have the opportunity to watch two really high caliber teams play!
Thanks for reading as always 
--Katie, a senior Biology major, is spending the Fall 2017 semester studying Health & Society at King's College in London through Arcadia University.Read more from Katie at https://katientheuk.wordpress.com/
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