Deja Vu Wembley!

We embarked on another trip down to Wembley on the 23rd May 2009, to see Shrewsbury Town football club (again!) v Gillingham football club.
Again, another convoy of coaches headed down south, making one stop at a motorway services, where Shrewsbury fans just took over the whole place.

It was a lovely day, so on arrival we headed to a pub. The pubs around Wembley were allocating themselves to either team, we ended up in a Wetherspoons.

Our seats in the stadium were a bit higher up than last time (ok, a lot higher up), but a good view. To cut a long painful 90 minutes short, Shrewsbury lost in the dying seconds to a late winner from Gillingham. The dream was over again. Maybe they will be lucky next time? Or maybe everything happens in three's?

STFC 0-1 GTFC

Arrivederci!

We will finish off this trip report on Milan with some pictures we took while exploring. We both found Milan to be a friendly and interesting city and would definitely visit again. We have found that not everyone rates Milan as a weekend break as much as we do, but each to their own and we all have different ideas on how to spend a long weekend. We are thinking about some more long weekends and considering on continuing with Italy, Venice and Rome being high on the agenda for obvious reasons.

Next time though we will take a more extensive phrase book as ours was not enough to get us by. Our little souvenir of Milan is a miniature vespa.

The next trip report will be our honeymoon in Crete. Before that, we will update you on TSFC and the treble! and a short report on our deja vu trip to Wembley! As you can probably see from the trip countdown on the right hand side of the blog, we will be off to Wales very soon for the dog's holiday, Tal-y-bont to be exact. We have more plans ahead and reports will follow accordingly.

Steph hasn't forgotten about the trip reports on Thailand and Malaysia, they will come, she just hasn't got round to transferring the APS films to CD yet, but Steph will get her act together and get it done!

3 Jolie

We went for a meal at the newly opened 3 Jolie restaurant owned by the AC Milan footballer Gennaro Gattuso. The restaurant was walking distance from our hotel. We really enjoyed the meal and would reccommend it. The restaurant had low lightning and a colourful decor, which set for a good atmosphere. The food was delicious and without much of a waiting time. Andy had steak and Steph had a beef spaghetti dish. Steph was drinking Vodka and they were very generous with their measures, so if you order a single you are more likely to get it verging on a triple!

After the meal, we went to our hotel bar for some drinks and got talking to our friendly barman, there was a bit of a language barrier, but we think we just about understood each other. The barman felt that he wasn't being challenged enough, so we got him making some cocktails! They were pretty good. The hotel bar closed quite early so the barman recommended his local. His local turned out to be a plastic gazebo in the middle of the street, but it had a good atmosphere. A couple of locals joined us and the language barrier was even greater, but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway.

Our friendly hotel barman

At the barmans local

Gattuso's restaurant

This Is It

Steph has been asked by a few what she is going to do with her 'This Is It' Michael Jackson tickets.
She has two concert tickets and two after show tickets. She has decided to keep one concert ticket and refund the rest. Steph also has a tour t-shirt, so all this will make a nice souvenir of the Michael Jackson concert that never was.

Michael Jackson

Just interrupting the Milan report to give a special mention to one of the world's greatest entertainers. For Steph's birthday back in April, Andy and the family bought Steph tickets to watch Michael Jackson in concert at the O2 arena in London. So, as you can probably guess we are very sad that Michael Jackson has died and that we won't get to see this great performer. Its a very sad loss. Andy is very fortunate that when he was younger he saw Michael Jackson in concert in 1989 on his Bad tour.

Here are some pictures from April, Andy threw Steph a Michael Jackson themed birthday party and everyone dressed up as Michael Jackson.

We are huge fans. RIP MJ.

San Siro

Kaka!

Crazy Fans!

A big part of our trip to Milan was to see AC Milan play. AC Milan is Andy's joint favourite European team with Real Madrid. We were very much looking forward to seeing Maldini and Kaka play.

We arrived at the San Siro (it was an early evening match) to a great atmosphere, we had a drink with some local fans before being let into the ground. As we were early, our first point of call was the club shop. Andy bought a home shirt with Kaka on the back.

The San Siro stadium looks pretty amazing from the outside, but incredible on the inside with an atmosphere to match. The fans make the atmosphere and AC Milan have a hell of a fan base.

We had some great seats, near the bottom, but high enough to have a great view of the pitch, opposite the tunnel.

The match: AC Milan v Torino

The final score was 0-0, disappointing as it would have been good to see AC Milan score.

What we loved was that the commentator would introduce the players number and first name and the fans would shout the surname - brilliant!!

We have to say though that some of the die hard fans certainly had a die hard attitude! We observed the fans on the top tiers and some were hanging off the railings! If they fell, they would have been dead!

Food and drink were brought round the stadium and to our amazement on this pretty chilly night, the most popular buy was the ice cream!

Maldini has only just retired in his forties, for an out field player, that is practically unheard of in England. Does anyone know the secret to why Italian players have longer careers?

After the game there was organised chaos with fans from both sides on their way home. We could not find an empty taxi or a bus to save our lives! We tried walking back to the hotel, but ended up getting a bit lost. We actually found out later that we had walked near to our hotel at one point! Eventually we found a taxi and welcomed our bed!

Shopping!

Andy deserves a well earned drink from all that shopping!

We both like doing this a bit and as it was Andy's birthday, we did a lot of it! Milan is great for shopping, clothes and shoes is what we were looking for.

If you've got a particularly large purse or wallet then the designer shopping centre, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is the place to go. If you're wallet or purse isn't particularly large, then it is still worth a visit. Window shopping at Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, etc... and the centre itself is beautiful. The architect for the building was Giuseppe Mengoni who unfortunately fell off some scaffolding and died in 1878, a few months before it was completed.

Not far from the famous Duomo is a shopping area called Quadrilatero d'Oro, here you will find little boutiques to large shops and departments stores, as well as a huge amount of Jewellery shops.

For the longest shopping street in Italy, go to Corso Buenos Aires, open til late as well!

While shopping, we did take in some sights as well. Who cannot miss the very imposing and impressive Duomo! There is an entrance fee for the treasury, baptistery and roof, but the Cathedral is free. This is one of the largest churches in Europe, it boasts 3000 statues, 135 spires and 96 gargoyles. Its a very beautiful building and is well worth a visit.

We did this part of the trip over two days, as there is so much to see.

Andy's Birthday - Milan 2007

Andy loves his football and has always wanted to go to Italy, in fact he has actually asked if we can live there one day for at least a year! Don't know when that will be! - So, it was only natural to think that the best birthday present would be a trip to Milan to sight-see, shop and to go and watch AC Milan play.

AC Milan is one of Andy's favourite European teams along side Real Madrid.

I took Andy for lunch at the Peach Tree restaurant in Shrewsbury to tell him about his birthday present, he had no clue and this was a day before we flew (the rhyme isn't on purpose!).

Well, of course he loved it!

We had an early morning flight, which we both agreed has to be one of the best flights we have ever had. It was a small plane (not sure of the type, answers on a postcard!), but it was quick on take off and landing was very smooth.

We both like to people watch and there was one gentleman on the flight which we both noticed, he was a bit secretive looking - so we concluded he had to be part of the Mafia!

To our surprise, he was actually arrested on arrival to Milan, whether he was part of the Mafia or not, we shall never know!

We did have a guide book and tried our hardest to get a bus to the city, but we ended up in a taxi and paying top dollar for the pleasure. Oh well.

The hotel was classed as a 4 star and certainly stood up to it's rating. It was great. The staff were friendly, the room was tidy and clean and we couldn't have asked for more.

We got our bearings and decided on a plan of action. We decided shopping and sight-seeing first. We ended up walking to the nearest metro station as we could not find anywhere to purchase the tickets for the tram. It was a bit of a trek, but we got to see a lot and it was good exercise. We had our tickets, so using the tram was possible now.

We stayed at the Hotel Mozart

We're Back!

Just a quick note to say that we are back from our honeymoon in Crete. We had a fab time, visited some beautiful places and met some new friends. We will do a write up very soon.

While we were away, we had some good news, TSFC won the League Challenge Cup! A great achievement.

Just getting back to normal now and challenging the pile of holiday clothes washing!

We're off to Wembley again as Shrewsbury Town FC have made it to the play-offs again for league one! Fingers crossed for a win.

Our first trip report, as promised, will be Milan.

TSFC Update

TSFC receive a talk by a sports scientist.

Early last year Andy entered TSFC into a draw to win sponsorship from Lucozade. Tens of thousands of teams all around the UK entered but only 80 teams were going to be picked to receive sponsorship and compete in a virtual league.

The day of the draw we tuned into Talk Sport radio, to our absolute amazement, TSFC were second out of the draw!

Since the draw, TSFC have received a brand new kit, a regular supply of Lucozade products and a training session with a sports scientist. The team have been loving it!

The virtual league is calculated from the results the teams get in their own real leagues. TSFC have been doing brilliantly and are top of the Shropshire Alliance League which has resulted in them being second in the Lucozade league which is a fantastic achievement.

The season is not over yet. In the Alliance league, TSFC have 6 league games left and are in two cup finals. Every game counts!

There is a lot to play for and some huge prizes to be won with Lucozade. If TSFC win the Lucozade league they will play an exhibition match at Old Trafford, Manchester United's ground! And, they will win a trip to Austria to a top training camp where they will be treated like premiership players!

Other prizes can be won like tickets to premiership games, these can be won by being top scorer, most improved team etc... Our top scorer is third in the Lucozade top scorers!

You can track TSFC's progress with the Lucozade league here:

Lucozade League

and

You can track their progress in the Shropshire Alliance league here:

TSFC

So, its very exciting at the moment!

Good Luck TSFC!!