Hampden Park Stadium and Scottish Football Museum

Over the Christmas holidays Alessio and I went back to Scotland, the only big trip we did was to go to Glasgow. There we went on a tour of Hampden Park Stadium and then onto the Scottish Football Museum.

Hampden Park is home to Queen´s Park Football club and to the Scottish National football team. It has a capacity of 52,000, it used to hold many, many more people. In fact in 1937 it recorded it´s highest attendance at 149,415 for an international match between Scotland and England. Wow! It is hard to imagine a stadium with such capacity.

It has also held some big matches in 1960 it hosted the European Cup final between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt (7-3), 130,000 attendance. It also held in 1962 the first ever Cup Winners´ Cup between Atletico Madrid and Fiorentina (1-1), then again in 1966 with Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool.

The museum has many objects on display and traces the history of Scottish football from the 19th century up to present day. It holds the original Scottish Cup made in 1873, the world´s oldest national trophy. There is film footage of some the memorable games and players.

We all enjoyed the whole experience, not only was it me and Alessio, my father, sister and her son Jamie came along too. The whole family is football mad!

I really enjoy going on stadium tours, so far I have been to Bernabeu(Real Madrid) and Allianz Arena (Bayern Munich). I have not been on a stadium tour of Camp Nou, as we usually go see to FC Barcelona play!

Hope you are all holding out in the lockdown!

Charlie Chaplin House and Museum, Vevey

During the February holidays Alessio and I went to visit the Charlie Chaplin House and Museum, which is situated in Vevey.

To be quite honest I did not know hardly anything about Charlie Chaplin except his movies and that he was married quite a few times. But this was remedied and I learnt quite a lot about him.

Charlie Chaplin moved to Switzerland in 1953 and stayed until 1977 when he died. He lived in a large house overlooking Lake Geneva in Vevey. He lived with his wife Oona O`Neil and they had 8 children.

The house is lovely and you see the furnishing, ornaments, pictures and photos from the family. Each room has written information about what you can see. The views of the garden are very nice too, we also walked around them too.

Once you have visited the house, there is a short movie about his life and then you go to the museum part. In the museum it is all about his life as an actor and his movies. There is lots to take in and read, and you can see things from his movies.

We both really enjoyed the visit and would recommend it, even if you don't know much about him and his life. You can buy tickets online and it saves you a bit of money and time. You can take a bus to the house/ museum and the stop it right at the gate.

Wishing you all a fab Easter break

Visiting First World War Sites in Flanders, Belgium

Langemark German Cemetery

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Passchendaele 1917 Museum

Black Watch Memorial

Christmas Truce Memorial

In October 2017 along with Alessio and my father we spent a week in Belgium. One of the trips we did was a tour of First World War battlefields. We got picked up from our hotel in Bruges and along with 6 or 7 more people we started our tour.

I can`t remember all the sites we visited but the main ones I do! There were many highlights but seeing Tyne Cot was one of them. Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of First World War in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. It was a very moving experience walking around and looking at the gravestones and reading the names of the men and seeing their ages too. It is quite astounding to think there are just under 12,000 men buried here. The memorial has the names of nearly 34,000 men missing with no known burial. This is the largest Commonwealth forces cemetery for any war!

We also visited Langemark German Military Cemetery, it is one of only four First World War cemeteries in the Flanders region and it has over 44,000 men buried.

We also went to the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, this was very informative and extremely interesting. You find out about the five battles of Ypres, including the battle of Passchendaele, all of them quite horrific! At the end there is reconstruction of the dugouts and trenches which Alessio found quite interesing!

We visited numerous other memorial sites such the Black Watch Memorial, for Americans soliders, memorial for the Christmas Truce football match, Spranbroekmolen Mine Crater, known as the Pool of Peace.

Also we visited the town of Ypres, there we visited the In Flanders Field museum and the Menin Gate. I already did a post about these places a good while ago.

I would definitely suggest doing a tour to see these places, now that it has passed the 100 year mark it is important to remember what happened and that the younger generation continues does not forget!

Happy weekend folks!