Saturday afternoon was an outing to see Aston Villa play Inter Milan in a pre-season "friendly," which means that the game doesn't even count as an official preseason match. We all piled into Seamus' car and off we went to downtown Birmingham, about 40 minutes' drive.
Seamus is a huge Aston Villa supporter, and has been since he was little. There are two football (soccer, to all the Yanks) clubs in Birmingham: Aston Villa and Birmingham City. Aston Villa is in the English Premier league, which is the top league in the country. I think Birmingham City is in a lower league, but I'm not sure which.
So we get to the stadium and there are thousands of people walking around in "claret and blue"--the colors of Aston. We got a quick soda and some chips (fries) and went in to our seats. We sat at one end of the field, just to the left of the goal. The seats were fantastic--we were only about 10 rows up from the pitch (field), so the action was close by.
Awesome seats!
I don't know if I'm going to be able to describe the atmosphere in words. If you've ever seen a European match on TV, or even the World Cup, you've heard the fans singing various songs and chanting. Well, I can tell you that what you see on TV doesn't even come close to conveying the solidarity and focus the fans have at the stadium. It's hard not to get caught up in the emotions and intensity of 46,000 fans. And the noise is deafening. We were lucky to see Aston score a goal at our end, the first one of the match, and it took about 30 minutes for my ears to quit ringing after the roar that went up from the crowd. Plus, every time the ball came anywhere near our end, everyone stood up to see what was going on. It was a lot of stand-up, sit-down. I've never experienced anything like it at any professional sporting event I've ever attended--baseball, American football, or basketball. It is a completely fantastic, and highly-recommended, experience.
After the match, we went back to the house and just sat on the patio having drinks and chatting. It was the first nice weekend we've had basically since May, when it started raining, so we wanted to take advantage of it to the fullest. Seamus cooked us this huge meal, and just as we were sitting down to eat, Kevin's other cousing Bridget appeared with her husband Jeremy. We had a really great meal and a super-fun time.
We stayed the night there, and the next morning, we had a giant fry-up breakfast: bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, bread--the works. It was another glorious morning, so we ate outside. Stuffed to the gills with food, Kevin and I walked into Lichfield city centre for a look at the cathedral and the surrounding area. It was about a 15-minute walk from their house, and the sun was bright and hot.
The cathedral was massive, and made from an interesting pinkish stone. Many of the other cathedrals are kind of a light-beige stone, so this was really interesting and different. It's in the gothic style, and had lots of statues all over the walls on the outside.
Lichfield cathedral
After we went through the cathedral, we went into the city centre and walked around for a while. It was Sunday, and most things were closed, but it was fun to look at nonetheless. It is an old city, and many of the buildings were timber-framed and crooked. It was really nice to be out and about in the sunshine, even though we were both wearing jeans and got too hot. It's hard to decide how to dress sometimes since the weather changes so quickly here.
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