So on Friday I took the train from London to Leeds which is about 2 hours north of London. I'd never been there before so I was excited to visit a new city. I was traveling up there alone because the rest of the team was flying into Manchester and taking a bus to Leeds.
 |
| Emirates Stadium where Arsenal Football Club play their matches. |
 |
| Leaving London... |
 |
| Cows!!!! |
 |
| Shall we make a stop at Downton Abbey? Not sure that it's anywhere near where they shoot. Wonder if they've seen a big upswing in visitors. |
Once I got to Leeds it took me quite a while to figure out where the damn hotel was. I was walking around with a lot of luggage for a good 30-45 minutes. Google maps did not seem to want to help me. I finally found it by following the river.
 |
| River Aire |
 |
| The Corn Exchange |
 |
| Main street with most of the shops. Had to find someplac eto exchange some left over euros. Thought I had lost my wallet (yikes!)But it turned out I'd just left it in the bag that I'd left at the hotel. (whew!) |
The rooms weren't ready yet so I left my bags in the lobby and met up with a couple of people for food at a pub. It was a really nice day out and we sat at an outside table in this tiny alley.
Then we went back to the hotel to check in. Lots of people were napping because of jetlag. Later that night the whole team got together for food. It was really nice because we don't often do that. The food was a bit salty and we kept having to ask the waiter to bring over water, but it was still pretty good.
Saturday was a really busy day. We were coaching a bootcamp and then playing in the evening. This was the first time that I was going to be doing something like this and I was nervous, but things seemed to go smoothly. Assisting on Saturday mostly consisted of watching the time, helping demo some of the drills. Nothing too crazy.
 |
| Promo shot from London Rollergirls Facebook page. People went mad over it. It doesn't say much, but it says everything! https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=784738098233661 Link to the promo video they did for the bout. It plays on the #hivemind used in reference to Gotham. |
Then it was game time. London was ranked #3 at the time and it was the first time our two teams would be playing each other. The game was a huge deal. Tickets sold out in minutes and were being scalped. They released more and those sold out too. It was an amazing atmosphere. Gotham rarely gets that much support from fans now cause people are always rooting for someone to beat us, but the fans there were just as excited to see us and they were to see London and it felt so good to at least have people cheering for us and excited for us to be there. We ended up beating them pretty solidly despite the close rankings.
 |
| HARD. SMART. TOGETHER. GOTHAM! #hivemind #bees |
After the bout there was an afterparty. It was a lot of fun. I Shazam'ed half a dozen songs while I was there. So much good undiscovered (by me) music. There was, of course, lots of dancing and a twerk pyramid.
I couldn't stay out too late or get too drunk as we had another day of bootcamp the next day, and I was actually leading one! The day of bootcamp went well, although I think we were all pretty tired. Then right after the bootcamp we got on a train to go to London. We only had one full day there (Monday) and then were leaving back to the States on Tuesday morning.
Leeds was a good time--brief and busy, but fun. I liked walking around at night. Some places were a little dodgy. Not run down, but just empty and left me feeling a little exposed. But meeting all of the people at the bootcamp and playing the bout... It was a good time.
Almost back home...
