Day 9 Theater of Dreams

Today we traveled from Durham to Manchester to tour Old Trafford, Manchester United's football stadium, or as Sir Bobby Charlton has dubbed it, the "Theater of Dreams". Man U is the most valuable franchise in all of sports and one visit to the stadium reveals that it's all business. The park has all the charm of a mega Vegas hotel. Everything was big - the biggest sports store, the biggest seating capacity, the biggest TV contract. From the manager on down to the ticket taker, the club has a certain swagger - think New York Yankees on steroids (sorry for the bad baseball analogy). The stadium tours run on a schedule that would make a Swiss watch manufacturer envious and our elderly guide kept whisking us along at brisk pace; at one point he shot out so fast that our group was split in two and the back half ended up lost in a maze of halls.

I was struck by the security procedures. There are cameras everywhere, even on the heads of the security personnel, and surprisingly, no trash receptacles in the stadium. No trash bins means fewer places to hide bombs. All fans are encouraged to throw trash on the floor and the entire stadium of almost 70,000 can be evacuated in a matter of minutes. While it's hard not to marvel at the Man U facilities and the success of the club, I came away from the tour longing for a return visit to Newcastle, where you have an overachieving city in which the people are better than the think they are. After the stadium tour we visited the club store and had a snack in the cafe before departing on the three hour trip to the Jurys Inn in Croydon, twenty minutes outside of London. Along the way we stopped at a carvery for an all you can eat buffet. We finally checked into the hotel at 10 PM and it was lights out at midnight.