18th September - London to Manchester / 19th September - LIVERPOOL V UNITED game / Manchester to High Wycombe

18th September - London to Manchester

Today we leave London for our drive up to Manchester.  We had our breakfast and packed all our bags, then went for a walk to Harrods and purchased an internet stick as there will be no wi-fi when we travel around U.K. Dad organized a taxi to Hertz to pick up our hire car and we made our 4 hour drive up the motorway to Manchester.  We arrived at about 6pm (cold and raining) and went straight to our hotel right across the road from Old Trafford. Mimi and Grandpa and Anne and Steve (friends they were staying with), met us at the hotel and we went into Salford Quays for some dinner, before returning to the hotel at about 11pm. It was good to see them. The hotel was fully booked as the football game between Manchester United and Liverpool was on tomorrow.  

19th September - Manchester to High Wycombe

Today we awoke early, and had our breakfast (big buffet breakfast, I had a plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, baked beans) cereal, cuppa tea and toast. YUM. The breakfast room was full of Manchester United Supporters!! (We were here to see Liverpool).  After breakfast we caught a taxi to Anne and Steves place to have a catch up and show them all our photos from our trip so far.  Anne made us a cuppa and some nice cakes and biscuits.  We said goodbye to Mim and Grandpa, they are travelling to Turkey tomorrow, then Steve took us to have a look at Salfords Rugby League ground and then dropped us back to the hotel to check out and head over to Old Trafford for the Big Game!!

There were people everywhere, we went and had a look in the supporters shop underneath the stadium, it was massive and packed with people! We bought some caps and Tom bought a scarf.  We walked into the stadium and found our seats.  They were undercover on the Northern side inline with the penalty box.  The players were warming up on the field, so dad and I went down a bit closer to get some photos. (mum wanted a photo of Torres) he was really tall and solid, he looked much bigger in real life than on T.V. Wayne Rooney was short and stocky. The crowd was getting very noisy as the stadium filled up with people, everywhere there was Red!!  The crowd was singing (not very nice songs to the liverpool fans) who were in a small corner of the stadium. At 1.30pm the teams came out onto the pitch and the crowd got even louder!! There were 75,000 people there, probably about 5,000 liverpool fans sitting in a small section. Thats the maximin for an away teams supporters because if they were all scattered, it would cause fights.  Manchester United scored first, a header from Berbotov. The crowd went crazy!  Manchester United scored again, an overhead scissor kick from Berbotov again. 2-0 at half time, in the second half Liverpool got a penalty, Gerard scored, then they got another penalty and Gerard scored again (the ball went straight through the wall of players and into the net). 2-2, with 6 minutes to go Berbatov scored to give Man United the win.  Everyone went crazy and were singing all their different songs.  

We took some photos of the ground, when it cleared out, the crowd was all singing as they left the ground.  We went back to our car, and made our way out of Salford.  The traffic was blocked in every direction, so we took a few different routes to get out of the North Country.  We stopped to get some food and decided to stop at High Wycombe for the night as we were all really tired. We got to bed about 11pm after a day we won’t forget!!