Updates.. Trip to England (290409 - 030509)

29^th April

TGV from Grenoble to Lyon St Exupery.

Plane: Lyon to London Gatwick

Train: Gatwick to St Pancreas. St Pancreas to Nottingham

I met Lenny at 3pm at Nottingham train station. Lenny treated me to Chicken lunch and a bus ride to Nottingham.

 

30^th April

Lenny and I toured around Nottingham city centre. I bought a Liverpool shorts for 9.99Euros which is a great bargain. There is a shop called Sportsdirect which really offers cheap and good prices to quality shirts. I bought a pair of shorts here too. Later on, we went to a shopping centre and got a 2Euro chicken which is really big enough for 3 people. That is our dinner for me, adeline and lenny.

 

1^st May

Lenny went for classes and I went to tour Nottingham by myself. I tried a speciality – Jack’s potato which cost 2.70 Euros but was very filling and appetizing! I visited a War museum (free of coz =P) and the Robin Hood statue. I am very impressed with the pricing of the food in Nottingham. It is definitely far cheaper than in France.

I reached back Lincoln Hall at around 3pm and played squash with lenny. Squash was really tiring and really needs to have a lot of technique and skill. It has been a long time since I performed court movement and was really shagged out after the 2 hour game.

We realized that the hotel that we have booked – Cresent House Hotel, which is at Southport, Merseyside, Liverpool is very far from Liverpool city centre. A good 30km! We have to buy a new train ticket which will take us from Manchester to Southport instead of to Liverpool.

This is a note to all future people who wants to go to Anfied, Liverpool. In many websites, they do recommend Southport to stay in when we go to Liverpool. However, if you need to go to Liverpool early to get tickets on the spot, DO NOT stay at southport. The earliest time we can get to Anfied from Southport on a Sunday morning is to take a train from Southport to Saint Hills and a bus at 9.34am. Hence we have to change our plans. So what did we do??

 

 

2^nd May

Early morning, at 0415hrs, we set off to Nottingham train station. Lenny wanted to go to Liverpool to try to buy the match tickets as from the website, the tickets office is closed on Sunday. I will travel and meet up with him at Manchester. In total, we walked a good 5km. Never did we know that this is the start of our road marches.

My bus at Broadmarsh bus station transits at Sheffield. I also have the chance to see the famous stadium – Hillsborough which is the stadium of Sheffield Wednesday. The Hillsborough disaster is a chapter in Anfield history which is being commemorated until now.

At Manchester, I received news from lenny. The ticket office is closed on Saturday to accommodate for the match on Sunday! A wasted trip!

When Lenny comes, we toured Manchester and even went to Old Trafford – Stadium of Manchester United. We took a stadium and museum tour. Although I am not a supporter of United, I really felt that their stadium is really good and classy. The tour itself is really very good. I also helped hogz to get a Man U scarf from the shop there.

After Old Trafford, we went straight to Southport. Most of the shops are already closed. We realized also that there are no early buses or trains available on a Sunday. We headed to our hotel (Crescent House Hotel) which is a 3 star and cost us a whooping 30pounds a night each. We have no choice as all the hostels are fully booked in Liverpool. The service by Jenny is great. We explained to her that we will need to leave early the next day and whether we can have the share of our breakfast in the evenings to which she agreed and prepared for us. It is really good service. I love the 2 dogs (Both were called Missy)!

 

3^rd May

Early morning 0550hrs, we took a taxi to Mughull for 23Pounds for 2 persons. The taxi covered nearly 20km of the distance. We have decided to walk the remaining distance which is around 10+ km in order to save cost. Our target is to reach Anfield ticket office by 0815hrs as the ticket office will open at that time. The time now is 0610. Off we walk, walk and walk. We have a good breakfast at Macdonald’s on the way and continued walking all the way to Anfield.

When we were near and found that the time is not in our favour, guess what? We ran. This is really our one chance to get to see a match in Anfield so we gave everything we can to get it. We reached Anfield ticket office at 0815hr SHARP only to be turned back by a crushing truth.

The chief steward said: No more tickets. All sold out.

Devastated we are. There is just one more way to get tickets – Black market. However, we are not willing to pay more than our budgeted amount. The moment we stepped out, a guy approached us: 400pounds for 2? WHAT? 200 pounds for a ticket? That is around 440(1 : 2.2) Singapore dollar per person! Insane!! No, sorry, no. Our max budget is 100 pounds per person which is already insanely a lot. But since we are able to pay 86 euros for a Barcelona ticket, the maximum that we can go is really 100pounds, above which, we really are unable to watch it. And so, we waited.

Another guy approached us. 150pounds for a ticket? No. 100 pounds. He left.

We waited for some time, took photos and waited and took photos again. We saw the 150 pounds guy again. We asked him again: 100 pounds? To which he replied: Alright! He led us to a corner and passed us our tickets to which we carefully checked to ensure that it was really authentic. The last thing that we want was that the tickets were faked. We were really very very happy when we got the tickets. In fact, we were very excited to be able to watch our first Anfield match.

Before the match, we went to the Merchandising shop and I got a scarf and jersey. The jersey cost 40pounds in Anfield. Although the price in Nottingham is cheaper, I want to get it at Liverpool as it is authentic and it is of the latest season. I got a beanie outside Anfield and I am well-equipped!

Later, we had our lunch (chips with rice) near Anfield. The shop is run by a group of Chinese from Guangdong and we had a fine chat with them. After that, we were ready to enter the legendary KOP.

The match is awesome with Liverpool hitting the bar 3 times. It ended with 3-0, Liverpool winning Newcastle. The atmosphere is really awesome with the singing of: You will never walk alone, chants of A-LON-SO, Shit-real (Shearer) and Going down, going down. When Joey Barton injured Alonso, the entire crowd stood up and booed him. When the ref pulled out the red card, everyone booed even harder! Later on, Owen entered and the ex-Red was booed also. Sad for him.

After the match, we toured Liverpool centre. Many shops are closed and we just walked around. Lenny and I shared a 2 piece chicken + 3 wings for dinner. It was still very early for our train back to Nottingham so we have to wait for the time to pass at Macdonald’s.

The train from Liverpool to Nottingham took us 3hrs, from 2123 to 0023hrs. All buses and trains are terminated when we reached Notts. Guess what? We walked another 45min back home again. =)