Chelsea FC StadiumTour

After so many visits to London I finally got the opportunity to do the tour of Chelsea Football Club’s stadium. Chelsea FC, for those who have been living under a rock, is one of the top teams in England’s Premier League and arguably world's most famous football team. Equally famous is "Stamford Bridge", the home of chelsea FC.

If you are in London I highly recommend the Chelsea FC Stadium tour at Stamford Bridge, particularly since most of us can no longer afford to go to games; the cheapest tickets of this much loved team are around 100 pounds. Even if you are a non-football (soccer) fan its still worth going just to see the difference in the Chelsea Team's dressing room and with what they give their opponents to change in.


The stadium (Stamford Bidge) is the most centrally located of all the London football clubs and is easily accessible by the London Bus & the tube (Fulham tube station). The guided tour cost 15 pounds/person which also includes admission to the Chelsea Museum and takes about couple of hours.You start the tour at the Chelsea Museum and go through the press room, Home & Away changing rooms before entering the stadium through the players tunnel.

The team's changing rooms, were surprisingly basic. Each locker in the home changing room was hung with its owner’s shirt. Our tour guide opened the locker of "Ballack" and let us take a peak into it. The lockers are clustered by player's common language.

Next came the moment that was for me the highlight of the visit. You walk out of the players tunnel onto the field to the sound of the roaring crowd. (imagination of course, it was an empty stadium, but still...). I had wondered if a tour of an empty stadium (no crowd, no footballers) would feel a bit, well, empty. But it turned out to be more exciting than the game I had been to last year when Chelsea visited California as part of their US tour.

View from the players tunnel

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Guinness Museum, Dublin, Ireland

So, I was in Ireland for a couple of days. In between the bouts of bad weather and other whatnots, we still managed to do a lot of city touring. Dublin is a fairly interesting city, and one of the highlights of it is oppurtunity tour the Guinness factory. I am not a huge fan of beer, but I did know that Guinness, one of the famous beer, originated from Dublin.

To avoid the long tourist lines we treked out to the Guinness Storehouse fairly early in the morning. The tour itself is a self guided tour and costs 14 euros which is not that expensive considering you get a free pint of beer at the end.

The whole museum is split up into about 7 levels and the building is shaped really cool as well. It’s in the shape of a pint of Guinness which is really cool to look at.

Each level you go up explains all the different ingredients into making the beer etc. In one of level there's a bit of a video section which is interesting but not very interactive, they take your picture and let you email it to your friends and there is an entire floor dedicated to Guiness advertisments which is interesting.

Anyways we finished our self guided tour at the 7th level of the bulding named the Gravity Bar which is the highest point in the Store House and has a look out all over Dublin. This is also where you get your free pint of Guinness. The gravity bar is pretty sweet as you can see the panoramic view of the entire Dublin City skyline from above enjoying your free pint of Guinness beer.

Our complimentary Guinness at the end of the tour

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Dublin in 48 hours

We woke up really early at 5:30am to get ready and take the tube to Victoria station so that we could catch the train to Gatwick Airport. We had an 8:30am flight to Dublin.  We decided to not take the Gatwick express as it’s much more expensive than the regular trains that go there, especially when we had decided to fly the cheap Ryan Air to Ireland, as opposed to the  expensive British Airways, I guess! Anyway, the flight itself was just over an hour and pretty uneventful.This was our first experience flying Ryan air.  Ryan air flights are interesting though because the flight attendants are constantly trying to sell you stuff.

We landed in Dublin on time and the immigration was a breeze, the Immigration officer just stamped a little visa thingy in our passport and we were out. We had decided to take the Airlink bus that goes to the city center . We got off at the O’Connell Street and were greeted by the "Spire of Dublin", which is a large100 foot steel pole in the middle of the road. It seemed to me that it was there for no reason and I was least interested in trying to find out more about the spire.

O'Connell Street and the Dublin Spire

The city is separated by the river Liffey. We were staying at O'Callaghan Davenport hotel at Merrion Square which was on the other side of the river and just a short walk, going across the bridge. The hotel is a bit of an odd historical building, but in a great location.

River Liffey and Ha'Penny bridge

Facade of O'Callaghan Davenport Hotel

After we settled in we decided to go out and explore Dublin.  We headed towards  the St. Stephens park and took a stroll through the park  and we came upto the Grafton Street. Grafton  street is the main shopping street of Dublin. It was pedestrian only and had a lot of the shops. The statue of Molly Malone is on Grafton Street also.

Statue of Molly Malone

Next we went to the Trinity College, oldest university in Ireland and quite popular among tourists, In the old library you can find the famous Book Of Kells.  We skipped the library and just strolled through the grounds 

In the evening we went to the Temple bar area. It is a wonderful area of Dublin, with a lot of history and things to do. You will find a lot of bars here, but more used by the tourists.We got to walk all through that area and see all the little, stores, pubs and some other sites by the river Liffey.  We ended up walking a lot and were pretty tired.  We ended up eating at one of the Kebab shops near the Temple Bar, which was to our surprise, really good

The famous Temple bar

Next day, we had planned on visiting the Dublin Castle and the Guinness storehouse. No visit to Dublin would be complete without a visit to the Guinness storehouse. You can read about our visit here

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London's Borough Market

The weather in London was fantastic. It was cold, cloudy and rainy, a perfect day to go to the Borough Market. The Borough Market is on Borough High Street across the London Bridge tube station. It is London's oldest food market and in terms of London shopping, it’s a foodie paradise.

The market is quite large with buzzing hive of noises, smells, and colors. It was difficult to resist all the stands and stalls which were selling anything from meat & vegetables to chocolates, breads, ice cream ,speciality cheeses, and what not.

The best part about the market were the stands selling chocolate brownies and pies and it’s no coincidence that there’s always a huge gathering of people outside it.

Throughout the market, something is always cooking, whether it’s stew and sizzling meats being grilled or something a little more interesting like ostrich burger.

I tried  the Raclette and the grilled cheese sandwich. Raclette  is  potatoes  topped with melted raclette cheese, which they melt right in front of you and then scrape it over your plate.

Whether you like or don't like markets, you are really missing something if you leave London without walking around the cobblestoned paths of the Borough Market.

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