This was a rare event where I had everything booked in advance – my train, my hotel and my game ticket. The Monday night football match in Birmingham was the main event on the schedule, so I always knew I would attend this game and no other event would be prioritized above it.
TrainI booked the train from London about one month ahead of time so it only cost £7 each way. It cost me £4 just to get from Lambeth North tube station to the Euston train station …

Rather than hang around downtown Manchester for a couple of hours before checking into my hostel, I decided to take the bus to Old Trafford to buy my ticket for the evening’s match. Even after seeing extra tickets in Glasgow on Tuesday night I still wanted to be sure I had my ticket for Manchester United.
Obtaining TicketsTickets were available for the match and I bought a ticket in the upper deck for £38. As I walked around the stadium looking for a restaurant to eat, there were a …

After booking my hotels, I decided I needed some exercise plus I wanted to check ticket status for the Manchester City game I was planning to attend Monday night. I was in Manchester in February 2007 and remembered that the walk from the Manchester train station to the City of Manchester Stadium is 1.5 miles. I decided to run to the box office.
Obtaining Tickets to Manchester CityI arrived at the City of Manchester Stadium’s ticketing center and tickets were available for the night’s game. Also, since I …

My entire day was planned for Sunday. I was taking a morning train from Edinburgh to Newcastle, taking the metro over to Sunderland, attending the Wolverhampton at Sunderland game at 4 pm, heading back to the Newcastle train station where I was taking the train to Manchester Sunday evening. The best part of the journey was that the train would only cost me one day on my BritRail pass. The worst part was that I was not sure if the conductor on the train would accept my rail pass from …

After spending the day at my hostel, it was time to head out for the reason I was in Newcastle – Newcastle Falcons rugby. Even though the game was not scheduled to start until 8 pm, I departed the hostel around 4 pm. I was hoping to hang out at a restaurant or pub around the stadium before the game. In order to get to Kingston Park, I took the subway from the Monument stop to the Bank Foot stop – although I could have gotten off at Kingston Park …

As I wrote earlier my plan for Thursday afternoon was to attend the first division county cricket match between Yorkshire and Hampshire at Headingley Carnegie Cricket Ground in Leeds. The match started at 10:30 am and it took anywhere between 2 and 2.5 hours to take the train from London to Leeds. One train left London’s King’s Cross station at 8:10 am and arrived Leeds at 10:21 am. By the time I would arrive at Headingley it would be around 11 am which seemed like good timing even though it …

I woke up Tuesday morning with nothing to do until 5 pm when I was supposed to meet Timmie Hampton at Pinchito Tapas in Islington. Thus, I decided it was time to book some hotels or hostels for my trip to Northern England. First up was Newcastle. I mainly used three sites to research where I would stay.
1) hostelworld.com2) hotels.com3) venere.com
At first I could not decide where to stay in Newcastle. My Let’s Go Europe book said Albatross was the best hostel in Newcastle. However, they only had 6 bed …