60,000 of our closest friends!

Today we treated ourselves to a sleep in of 0830 woo hoo!  But unfortunately our body clocks were saying GET UP at 0730.  But we got up and packed up as it was time to move on from the conference hotel and onto our Paddington apartment.  But first we had a 'Football' match to watch.  So we left all our luggage with the Park Plaza and headed to the tube station to get to Arsenal.

We arrived into Arsenal and as soon as we came out of the tube station the atmosphere was already buzzing with all the Arsenal fans lining the streets, tents everywhere selling merch and food and the roads were closed for cars,  so we just followed the crowd to Emirates stadium.  We arrived at least an hour before kick off so we of course had to get some merch (so we weren't booted out of the members section)!

Once we were kitted up we found our gate (and prayed to the Football gods) that our ticket would work.  It was all a bit cloak and dagger like - the tickets only arrived into Claire inbox late afternoon yesterday (we got them off a website) with a little note saying that if any security guards asked where you got the tickets from that they were a 'gift'!  Eeeek!  Thankfully after getting patted down by security we got to test the tickets.......and thankfully the light went green and it all worked well!  Phew!

We then headed to the bar and stood around with the dead set fans also having drinks and cheering and chanting.  It was all very entertaining and then the big drum came out to hype up the crowd even more.  Of course we couldn't go through to the stadium with food or drinks so it all had to be consumed quickly.  We then went right to the top of the stadium to our seats.  Claire went ahead of Carrie but got a bit lost in the crowd (zigged when she should have zagged) so had to go up to go back down to start the venture again.  While Carrie stood there confused wondering where Claire had got to?  And of course phone coverage was dismal so couldn't contact Claire.  Carrie went and sat down and hoped Claire would find her way back. She did thankfully!

Emirates Stadium capacity is 60, 704 - today's game brought in a total crowd of 60,167 of Gunners fans.

The seats were amazing and had a great view of the pitch.  It was a great atmosphere of more drum beating, lots of chants and interesting songs aimed at Ange Postecoglou current manager of Nottingham Forest (who used to be coach Australian National Team & Tottenham etc).  Arsenal won 3-0  - so glad we got to watch them win.  Even with so many people in the stadium everyone was better behaved than we expected and had no issues at all.

We then headed back to our hotel at Westminster Bridge to collect our luggage to move onto Paddington, however as we got out of Waterloo tube station there was a massive crowd of protestors. There was a  "Unite the Kingdom" protest organised by a far right activist, and approximately 150,000 Brits were apart of it.  Security at our hotel had become locked down so had to line up to show our ID before entering (much different from the previous days where you could walk around with ease).

We were going to originally travel to Paddington with our luggage via the tube but then decided to catch a Black cab as the feeling on the ground was uneasy and we really didn't want to tackle that crowd again and deal with all the litter on the ground by this crowd.  Police presence was everywhere. There were an extra 500 police brought in from surrounding areas to support the 1000 local met officers on the ground today.

We finally arrived at our accommodation at Paddington, but we actually didn't have any access details as we had only been contacted by the accommodation this morning. The email came via our travel agent and Claire responded as soon as she woke this morning, with all the information they required. Checking email often through ought the day, but still no response. This was not ideal as we couldn't access the apartment key as we needed a 6 digit code and the property managers office was closed. After spending ages trying to google to get contact details, as the phone number that was on our voucher wouldn't connect, we managed to get the apartment complex concierge to let us into the foyer and use his phone to call around.  We finally found a random number on a website and FINALLY got through to someone after an hour of trying and got the code and so Claire trekked it back to the key nest location to finally work out the apartment number.  Oi yoi!

For dinner we stumbled over a cute Lebanese restaurant which was exactly what we needed. We had a lovely fatoush salad with shaved lamb and pita with roasted red pepper hummus.  Dinner was delicious and we were seated right next to another older Australian couple so we enjoyed having a chat with them.  They were only starting an 8 week European trip, lucky them!

After dinner it was back through Tesco to get some grapes and drinks and head back to the apartment for a glass of wine and to chat to you fine folk!