We get quite a lot over coverage of baseball over here these days, but it's hard for a 'new' sport to build up a following in a country where very few play it. Look at soccer in the US - millions of kids play it, there are dozens of excellent college teams but the league there has still struggled for a decade in a market that is arguably sports saturated.

If there are games being played in Britain I haven't heard of them. Went to a Red Sox / Mets game back in '94 but nothing since. Seems like US franchises are targeting Europe in a big way though. We had an NFL game here in September and and NHL game as well (no Wings or Lie-downs though so I didn't bother going).

I saw the NFL game....media made quite the big deal about it here. My guess is that baseball takes better hold in countries that don't really have a "native" game. You folks have cricket and soccer which are really hits over there, so there probably isn't too much interest in baseball.
Now curling...that is of great interest! (I'm also 1/4 Scottish)

Let's do it!!!!

Pre-Euro days!

I'm just glad the UK had decimalisation long before I went.


I mean, I think it was something like 12 pence is a schilling and 20 schilling is a pound. To me that's 240 cents in a dollar

I probably was ripped off aplenty because I wasn't even counting my change when I bought something.

All those notes looked cool, though. Love all the different inks.

They were so neat.

The £1 coin is small in diameter but thicker than lower denominations. Basically I have no idea why. As to the £50 being the biggest we have, I guess it's because £50 is worth something like $6000, oh hang on, $6,025. No, wait, now $6050!

Seriously, I don't know. I guess we are all paupers and the more notes we need to carry the richer we feel. The British banking system never recovered from when y'all threw all that tea in the harbor in Boston.

I remember Italy before the Euro. You go into a cafe, order a latte and they'd ask you for 80,000 lira or something. You'd panic about the high prices in Italy, before you realised that the coffee was actually 40 pence.

Yeah, it is quite a bit thicker. The US used to have $500, $1000 (and some higher valued ones that were never very common) but they are no longer in circulation and are worth several times face value. They are no longer legal tender (which is interesting because all US COINS ever minted are still technically useable) although banks will exchange them for face value and destroy them.

Why do the different territories (or whatever they're called) have their own notes? They wouldn't let me use a Scottish banknote in England and made me exchange it for an English one. Can you use Scottish bank notes in N. Ireland because that's where I must have gotten it?

Italy was fun! Felt rich there! Last time I was there was 1989. I was in Assisi before the big earthquake.

I didn't make it to Italy when I went to Europe

I went to Dublin, Waterford, Belfast, London, Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon.

I also saw neighboring towns in many of those places. In London for example we went to Bath, Stonehenge, etc. They even let us touch the stones at Stonehenge - supposedly that isn't allowed anymore unless you have a special tour.

I was at Stonehenge as well...rode a bike there from Salisbury...not for the faint of heart, especially that last final hill right before you reach it. Ugh! that was hard! But it was cool. You were lucky to touch the stones.

I'm ready to go back!!

Gordon Brown is now the PM. Mr. Blair is on to higher pursuits in intenational diplomacy...
Did you get to any other part of Ireland, catbox?

Blair stepped down around May last year. New PM is Gordon Brown.

Don't know where your Dad gets his info but if so it's news to me. I'm not saying the Queen wouldn't be disappointed (I have no idea how she would feel about it), but she is in no position to influence the decision in any way, shape or form. The only political power she has is to withold the 'Royal Assent'. Every new law has to be signed by HM the Q (this is called 'Royal Assent') and the only reason she might ever not grant it is if a government tried to do something unconstitutional such as increasing the number of years between elections fron 5 years to, say, 15.

The majority of people in Northern Ireland wouldn't choose a united Ireland anyway, at least not the way it currently stands.

Royal family history is verrry fascinating! It was pretty eventful even in the 20th century.
very neat, catbox. That was my only regret that I didn't stay longer in England so I could get to Ireland and Scotland.

We didn't make it to Whales or Scotland. The only England we saw was tons of London (like 4 or 5 days there) - everything we wanted to see other than a tour of the Tower of London which was ridiculously expensive. My favorite thing there was that tower (I forget what it's called ) that commemorates the fire way back when. It's a whole bunch of stairs and then a super tiny cage at the top and you could see most of London. The best part was the price - it was only a pound!

London in 1981 was a pretty happy place. The Royal Wedding was about to happen in 1.5 months...bought lots of souvenirs! We just went to Westminster, St. Paul's, walked down next to the Thames, and rode the tube a lot! We were pretty poor too.

I bought very few souvenirs during my month in Europe - just tons of pictures. We didn't go inside the fancy English churches. The outside was amazing and I had previously been inside of St. Patrick's Cathedral and St. James Cathedral (both in Dublin and both Protestant despite the fact 90% of Dublineans are Catholic) so that was enough for me. I took the buses more than the tube.

Speaking of subways, the ones in Spain and Portugal are top-notch.