The Football

25th - 30th October, 2010

We managed to get some tickets to a college football game in Charlottesville, Virginia. So after leaving Niagara Falls we had a bout a week to fill in before the game.

We followed Lake Erie down to the town of Erie in Pennsylvania, a small port town that badly needed a facelift, before heading south to Youngstown, Ohio to visit the Daffin's Chocolate Kingdom. We had seen this on TV and thought it looked really cool. It claimed to have life size solid chocolate animals such as turtles and deer and to be the largest candy store in the world. It wasn't all it claimed with the Chocolate Kingdom fitting into about  the space of most people's bathroom, and the candy store was mainly filled with Hallmark cards and gifts. Free samples of the chocolate distracted us from our disappointment though!

At the Chocolate Kingdom tasting the samples.

We continued on into Columbus, Ohio which is a large university town where we were hoping to see a replica of Christopher Columbus' ship the Santa Maria. Sadly for us, the season had ended as the ship needed to be taken out of the river before it froze, crushing the ship. From there it was off through Kentucky horse country to Charlottesville for a three night break from travelling and the football.

Charlottesville was a very nice place, once again centred around a university, the University of Virginia. We arrived in town to find out that President Obama was due in the next evening for a political rally (mid-term elections were being held on the 2nd Nov). We went into the centre of town to the mall and looked at where the rally was going to be, but decided not to hang around. At 2pm there were already about 500 people queued up at the gates (that were due to open at 5pm) for his 7pm arrival. Because it was such a big deal to have the President in town, the road from the airport into downtown was completely closed from 6-9pm.

30th October, 2010 - The Football.

University of Va Cavaliers vs Miami Hurricanes. Where do we start?? Walking from the carpark to the stadium we saw all the tail gate parties (basically a bit of a picnic and some drinks to get you ready for the game). They were everywhere and they came prepared with tables, chairs, eskies, right down to serviettes and plastic plates in team colours! Of course EVERYONE was wearing team jerseys. We arrived into the stadium about 30 mins before the game was due to start to see a 200 piece marching band (all dressed as Cavaliers, complete with feathered caps) performing. They were fantastic and very well drilled. No one missed a beat or a step the whole time. They continued on with Star Wars music, while marching around, forming themselves into letters spelling out STAR WARS.

The band was followed by the Cheerleaders, who were also awesome. Cheerleaders tend to be either loved or hated (mostly depending on whether you made it onto the squad or not), but you've gotta give them some credit, there is definitely a great amount of acrobatic skill required for the job, not just self importance and good looks!

 Virginia Cavaliers Team

Then it was time for the game. Our jaws dropped as the players ran out onto the field, about 100 players run out for each team!

We didn't know much about the rules of the game, enough though to know what a touch down was. Not sure how but the game that consisted of four 15min quarters managed to take 3 and a half hours to complete. They stop for everything and swap players every few minutes. No excuses for getting tired! Virginia won the game and at the end there was the "run on", where everyone in the crowd runs onto the field and mobs the winning team. All in all an awesome event!