Pub sit

Because I had to work on Saturday, by the time I joined up with the New Zealand day circle line pub crawl, they'd been drinking and crawling for about 5 hours. While still remarkably coherent, we ended up just staying at one pub for the duration. So I feel like I'm letting you all down by having done more of a pub sit than a crawl. But I tried! I also learned that Temple - the stop I met up with them at, is actually the last normal stop on the crawl, so there.

I knew I'd gotten off at the right tube stop when I came up the stairs and turned the corner outside to see a whole lot of public intoxication, puking, and peeing against walls. Ahh, massive drunkenness. But friendly drunkenness. The place closest to the tube, the Walkabout, was ridiculously busy with a line waiting to get in and masses of people stuffed inside. Thankfully - since I had no time for queuing, I needed to be drinking - that's not the pub I needed to find. Our pub, which I don't even know the name of and probably couldn't find again if you paid me, was pretty stuffed as well, but the crowd would come and go in waves. Remarkably we managed to secure a couple of stools and half a table in no time at all. I was really pleased with the amount of time it took to get a beer - I think I waited about 15 seconds at the bar. Fantastic. There were a lot of New Zealand shirts, particularly All Blacks rugby jerseys and another team jersey that was tan and dark brown. Did you know that the official color of New Zealand is black? Just black. So in addition to the All Blacks, their cricket team is called the Black Caps. So there were a lot of black jerseys running around. There were also some homemade NZ outfits (t shirts, bed sheets, jackets with big NZs painted on). And a few random guys in cow costumes. I didn't really talk to a lot of random Kiwis, mostly because I could really only hear the people sitting right next to me. The accents and slurring (not mine) probably didn't help. So we drank and drank and drank some more and then realized some food might be a good idea, so finally abandoned our lucky stools and had some amazing Thai food before I headed home. It was still only 10:30 by the time I got home, but I'd only been out since 5:30 and was totally exhausted. I can't imagine if I had started at noon. I'd have been a puddle somewhere near South Kensington.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to post. Since I went straight from work, I spaced bringing my camera. But basically imagine me in a crowded pub, surround by people in black and tan jerseys and the occasional cow costume, holding a pint of Speight's Distinction (which was delish!).