Old Trafford

Ok, you saw how Zach was trying to be funny at Old Trafford, but surprisingly there were fans from other football teams touring Old Trafford as well - even Liverpool, Manchester City fans included! But this also made the trip interesting because our guide for the tour was always teasing these fans of other teams - such as Oxford United not being able to compete in European matches or Liverpool not having won a single Premier League title yet. The record breaking 19th Premier League trophy was also obviously an achievement to boast about - it's just a simple number "19" placed around the stadium (outside, on posters...) but yet the message was clear.

Amongst other things, there are also items commemorating the epic treble achieved during the 1998 - 1999 season, when Man U won the Premier League, FA Cup and the Champions League.

(left: the 3 trophies of the treble, right: the 1998-1999 kit signed by Sheringham and Solskjaer, scorers of the 2-1 win over Bayern Munich in the Champions League final)

other interesting displays are: (2008 Champions League trophy, kits of different seasons over the years...)










Another thing to mention is the sheer experience of being at the stands of Old Trafford - the Theatre of Dreams. It is truly a spectacle to behold, being in one of the largest football stadiums (seating up to 78,000 as told by our guide). We were told that tickets were so highly sought after, that the seats in the VIP boxes were going for as much as 65,000 pounds for watching a season's worth of matches!

The good thing about the tour was that we were really introduced to "the places" that people will want to visit - the dugouts, the players' tunnels, players' lounge (photos are actually more or less covered by zach). I've heard of stadium tours where some of these places that are considered to be essential to a stadium tour are actually made out of bounds to the public! The pity is that we couldn't expect the electrifying experience of being at the stadium on an actual match day - I'll be sure to drag Zach back along with me to watch Man U at home when we get the chance!

To put the icing on the cake, for a not-really-too-expensive museum visit and tour, we were also given a certificate of participating at the tour, "signed" by Sir Alex Ferguson. The Man U lanyards that we were given to hold our tickets when going on the tour we also for us to keep, even though I was expecting that we might have to give the lanyards back!

Thereafter we also had some awesome dimsum, especially since Jian Hui had some serious craving for eating that particular dimsum restaurant for months (?) already. I especially liked the prawns wrapped in fried tofu skin and the fried soup dumpling! (鲜虾腐皮卷 & 锅贴)











(left: Jian Hui going gaga over ordering dimsum, right: aftermath of our dimsum lunch)

Another thing worth mentioning was when we decided to spend some time at a gambling shop. There are quite a few of these shops around in both Leeds and Manchester - they have machines for slots, poker etc - we definitely don't see them around in Singapore! While we harboured hopes of winning the entire gambling shop with maybe just 5 pounds (in the style of 双天至尊's 李南星), we couldn't anything at all! In the end we were content to have fun at a machine where we were supposed to drop coins into a machine in order to make other coins drop (as our winnings). We played with a machine that was using 2p, and it was definitely a lot of fun as we tried to scrap some winnings by just using 1 pound's worth of 2p coins!