From 1982 until 1992, I visited London quite often. At least four extended stays in the city and the surrounding countryside. Twice, to cover Wimbledon, from start to finish, in 1985 and 1986.

However, before today, the last time I was in London was 1993, and that was soccer-related, too. I was on my way back from the Asia qualifying tournament ahead of the 1994 World Cup, and I stayed for a day or two. I remember seeing the musical Forever Plaid.

This time? Into town, from Coventry, to see the UAE Olympic football team play Team Great Britain at Wembley Stadium.

London is about 90 miles south of Coventry, and the train ride into Euston Station was an hour and change.

I had forgotten how much more imposing London is than any other city in the British Isles. Big. You can feel the bigness. You can feel the self-centered-ness of it. The rest of the country doesn’t much matter, in the big scheme (like Paris, in France), and it’s hard to argue.

People in London look fitter, sleeker and better dressed than the folk I have been living among the past 10 days in Manchester and Coventry. But you expect that, too, in The Capital.

I got in a bit early, so I took the Javelin Train over to the Olympic Stadium site in Stratford, in some old docklands on the east side of the city.  Nice train. New. Short ride.

It was a disappointment to learn I could not wander the grounds of the epicenter of the 2012 Olympics — because I didn’t have a ticket to any events there. I just looked from the outside, as did everyone else without a ticket. That’s me, above, and the sign telling me I would go no further.

Probably just as well, in the big scheme, because by the time I rode back, solved the “how to get to Wembley from here” issue (take the Overground Train to Wembley North), and walked the final 15-20 minutes to the Big Yard … the first game was kicking off and it was beginning to rain.

The new Wembley (I was in the Old Wembley in the early 1990s) is far more impressive than is Old Trafford. It’s an actual modern stadium with all the gadgets. But a lot of the traditional stuff, too. The statue of Bobby Moore near the suite entrance, for instance.

I sat in a luxury box for the first time in my life. Lots of press boxes … zero luxury boxes. That I recall. It was a little bit wasted on me because I was writing the match report for The National, and it was a deadline rush job, because the game ended at 9:30 p.m. here — which is 12:30 a.m. in the UAE, and we were off the floor at 1 a.m.

To make it worse (and this is too “inside journalism” for most of you), I have discovered this phenomenon pertaining to 3G (dongle) devices. If you are in a big crowd, the competition to get linked up is too intense. Thus, I could not get online for the whole of the second game, and I ended up dictating (how retro) to my colleague Graham Caygill back in Abu Dhabi, and the nightmare of that was amped up by three second-half goals scored while I was on the phone.

It went from 1-0 to 1-1 to 2-1 to 3-1 (UAE loses) … and if you haven’t tried to write 600 semi-coherent words on a game changing all the time … you haven’t lived. Or you’ve been lucky.

I missed dinner entirely, but more about that later.

It was a very nice game, and I like Wembley. It reminds me of a serious/modern North American sports venue. Like the football stadium in Glendale, Ariz. New. Lots of stuff. But with better access via train and subway.

I made the fairly long walk back to Wembley North, with the aid of about 200 of the 70,000 volunteers here (see one, below), and the train was packed, and I got back to Euston in time only to have a chicken sandwich at Burger King … before catching the 12:19 a.m. train back north, arriving Coventry — The Sticks, comparatively — at 1:30 or so.

So, that was London. No Big Ben, no Tower … but I saw a lot of Wembley, which was fine.