Where to begin?

Two weeks from the landing strip to the first post is murder for a travel blog, but here goes.
Fine print: I reserve the right to revisit any of these points in further detail later.

We've seen more sights than I can keep straight in my head at the moment, from the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar and Leicester Squares. We've had more culture-shock moments than I would have expected - nothing drastic, but lots of little stuff. It's not hard to figure out, for instance, that 'white' coffee is just coffee with milk in it, but when you're at the counter in the cafe, you still feel a little of an outsider. So far though, London is awesome. Awesome in the contemporary, superficial way as well as in the ancient and powerful sense.

As Melissa implied in her post earlier, we've been doing the pub thing quite a bit lately, not having any dishes to cook for ourselves at home. That part's sorted now, but last night we had our first really real English pub experience - Manchester United squaring off against Arsenal on a Saturday night.

The Crown & Pepper, across the street from our house, has been nearly deserted every time we've been in so far, but the little chalkboard outside reading "Man U / Ars / 5:00" told us that this night, things would be different. Inside, every seat was full and the bar was lined with punters (that's patrons) staring up at the tv screens dotted all over the walls. We managed to find an empty table way at the back, where we could see the large projection screen well enough.

The crowd was more subdued than I had expected, until Arsenal had a big scoring chance some way into the first half. A great shout went up and all - men, women, and yes, children - were on their feet, arms in the air, only to sit down with a collective sigh as the ball sailed mere inches wide of the goal. Arsenal did manage to score a short time later, and I was reminded of playoff nights at Dominion Pub when the Habs managed to give us all a little hope.

Back home, any crowd watching a hockey game will usually have at least one noisy group of supporters for "the other guys." In the Crown last night, though, if anybody was rooting for Man U they kept their thoughts to themselves.

I happened to be up at the bar when a bad call left Arsenal's only goal scorer with a yellow card, and the uproar was even bigger than the goal that had just preceded it. I really thought guys were going to start lobbing pint glasses at the tv.

In the end, Man U won the day 2-1, so I didn't get to partake in a celebratory beer-fest, but that's ok, there's plenty of time for that later.

I came here really looking forward to getting into English pub culture, but as with any highly built-up expectation, part of me knew that it was perfectly likely that the real thing wouldn't live up to the legend. I'm happy to report, however, that I'm thouroughly enamoured of the London pub scene, and I know I've only scratched the surface. I have yet to catch a live band, although I hear them warming up at The Edge (another local pub) most afternoons.

This Friday there's a show at The Green Dragon down the street, featuring a band described as 'for fans of Tool' and belonging to a genre whose name I can't recall, but is six or eight words long and includes the words 'schizo,' 'crush,' and 'core.' The opening act appears to be a fat lady in a leopard-print bathing suit.

I'll tell you all about it on Saturday.