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Hello From London On Day One!
10/24/08 - 03:56 PM
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The Saints are coming!  In fact, they’re here. 

Greetings from London.  Well, a long flight is behind us now - and now we’re looking forward to seeing a great game on Sunday, at least we’re hoping for that.  The word is just starting to break around here about the reports of Deuce McAlister and Will Smith testing positive for a banned substance along with two other Saints.  Wow - tough year for the Saints!  What’s next?  Let’s just hope all the fans who have flown to London (I’ve heard some reports as many as 18,000 people?) won’t be disappointed.
ef
As for our excursion, it was me, Kay Whittingon, our winner of the Hixson Auto give-away, and her friend Bob Wieters, flying out of AEX last night at 7:50pm.  We got to Houston and then left from Houston around 10pm heading to London Heathrow. We got to London today around 1:30pm and there wasn’t much sleep on the fllight, so we’re all a little dragging.

Even so, we got checked in to our fabulous hotel, the Hyatt Churchill in Downtown London - a 5-star hotel, no less.  I feel out of place!  I’m used to the “budget” hotels - but that’s expected when you have 7 kids.  I’m definitely feeling culture shock, too.  I’m really a USA kind of guy.  My only other time out of the US was to Canada at least 10 years ago.  London is a very international city - seems like more people speak some other language - we’re not in Alexandria, Toto!

I’m trying to figure out the money thing - although you quickly learn the dollar doesn’t have much value over here.  It’s almost worth half of the current Pound - and that makes everything more expensive. We found a quaint little Polish place to eat at tonight - I had some awesome kielbasa (Polish Sausage) and some Beef Stroganoff.  Kay had a potato pancake with goulash on it and Bob had some kind of pork dish.  It was all pretty good, although I think I enjoyed mine the most - but then again, I’m almost half Polish!  And of course, washing it down with a Piwo - but only one!

So I’m back at the hotel now - it’s after 11pm local time and I’m getting this done and then hitting the sack.  Speaking of sack, I was watching some of the local sports TV and every time they refer to a coach getting fired, they say he got “sacked”.  Ouch. Let’s hope Sean Payton won’t get sacked after this season - which might not happen if his DL gets some more sacks!

Well, I’m about to turn in.  A big day tomorrow - we’re going to try to tour London in the morning and then tomorrow night it’s the “Festival New Orleans” at London’s 02 Arena - sounds like a really great time with a true New Orleans flavor.  So we’ll report back tomorrow.  But more than anything, I’m really looking forward to the game. 

Cheers!
Al Q.