Liverpool could've been named Liver-drool today due to the frothing-at-the-mouth excitement Daniel was displaying for the day ahead! I've never known such excitement could even exist, it was ridiculous! (On an entirely different and unrelated subject, there's only 103 days till Christmas today (the day of the blog, not the day it was written). In fact, because I'm so far behind, by the time you read this there'll be less than 100 days to go - I LOVE CHRISTMAS SO MUCH!) The reason for his excitement was that he was going to fill his dream of seeing Liverpool (the soccer club) play in an English Premier League (EPL) game at Anfield, their home ground! It's actually really exciting seeing people's dreams come true so I was really excited to be part of that with him too! We rose early this morning - there was no way Daniel was staying in bed any longer than he needed to - and headed for our included breakfast. I had a healthy breakfast this morning, continuing on my trend that if I had a healthy breakfast then all the beers and bad food for the rest of the day are allowed; after all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day! After breakfast, we headed into town. Daniel located the massive Liverpool merchandise shop yesterday and was keenly ready to spend his life savings there. I found Liverpool to be a really nice place, with lots of old industrial buildings being reinvigorated and mixing with lots of modern developments. The Liverpool shop was located in a massive modern retail development called Liverpool One. Just a few doors down was the Everton shop, which quickly became my new favourite, and I didn't even set foot in there! So Everton are another EPL team in Liverpool, almost literally playing games across the road from Liverpool. Naturally because they are so close, there is a really fierce rivalry. So when Everton opened their merchandise shop in the facility, they decided to call the shop Everton Two, that way their shop address permanently looks like a winning soccer score against their rivals; Everton 2, Liverpool 1. What absolute smart **** legends! Anyway, we went into the Liverpool shop, and just as I expected, Daniel felt like he was in heaven and spent up big! He bought a match day guernsey for himself, and he got his girlfriend one too in the same size. I think he just used it as a convenient excuse to get another one for himself. He pretty much bought half the store actually. He also decided to get numbers and names put on the guernseys, which meant a bit of a wait, so after he dropped them off we went for a wander. We decided it'd probably be best to find out where the station was that we'd need to go to on Monday when we left for London, and to arrange our tickets for the journey. We found Liverpool Central with ease, and promptly discovered that despite it being the 'central' station by name, it wasn't really. Weird. But the friendly information man pointed us around the corner and down the road to the main station. Dad and I booked our tickets direct to London for Monday, but Daniel was pretty certain he was going to stay a couple of extra nights to watch the Champions League on Tuesday night, so booked his ticket for Wednesday. Unfortunately for him, the most ideal train involved a transfer to a different train further along. Good luck Daniel you travelling fool! Once we'd finished there, we still had a while to wait for Daniel's shirts to be done, and as it was approaching lunch time and kick-off in earlier EPL games, we found a classic English pub to have a couple of beers and watch the soccer like the locals. It was pretty packed, but the atmosphere was awesome and I got even further realisation just how massively into their soccer they are. And, as at last night's pub, they served cold beer if we chose that variety! Yay! After those refreshing ales, we headed back to the Liverpool shop to collect Daniel's shirts, and in the process he also bought the other half of the store he didn't last time, before heading back to the hotel to dump all that stuff and get ready to go to the match! I was sort've thankful Daniel's girlfriend wanted a shirt (still skeptical on that one Daniel) because it meant I could look the part at the match. Plus it was red and red's an awesome colour! We headed back downstairs and hailed a taxi straight away. The driver knew exactly where we were heading without even saying; Anfield! It's not actually that particularly impressive a place is Anfield, just jammed in the middle of a middle-class housing area, with no parking, no transport, no anything really. All of a sudden it's just there. But it did carry this incredible energy and aura, a sense of anticipation, that was really exciting, and you could see that written all over Daniel's face as we got there! We did the important things first, like getting the tickets, before venturing yet again into the Liverpool shop at the ground. All the same stuff, but a tonne more people. We didn't last in there long (I'm not actually sure what else Daniel could possibly find to buy really). As we left the store, to our amazement we actually bumped into two blokes, Brennan and Luke, that Daniel and I knew from home - Daniel used to go to school with them and knew they were in Liverpool, but with both parties needing wifi to communicate, they hadn't managed to tee up a time to meet. But it didn't matter, because as luck had it we found them anyway! Must've been fate! We decided to get right into the experience of match day, which happened to mean crossing the road to the jam-packed pub full of Liverpool supporters, and have a couple of pre-match drinks! It was already pretty awesome to experience with the singing and chanting already started in there. With about 40 minutes to go before the match, we parted ways and went to find our seats, but not without arranging to meet up with them again at that same pub after the match. Lucky we left it later to go into the ground, because as much as the outside didn't look impressive, inside the stadium was even less so! It's so old and rundown, with old turnstile gates, really low, tiny entrances, no video screens, and to top it off, old wooden bench seats with absolutely no leg room. Seriously, the blokes in front of us must still have our knee marks in their back! There's also no drinking allowed in the seats! They maintain it's all part of the history of the place, but really, it's just a rundown old place and they have no idea of the comfort they're missing out on! No wonder they all leave it to the last minute to get into the ground! Daniel and I sort've had to stand to save our legs while there was nothing happening before the game, but when an old granny, all of 4-foot nothing, poked us and told us to sit down, I questioned why on earth we needed to, and she said she wanted to see. I told her there was nothing even on the ground to see (a lot of people were standing), but she said she just wanted to see all that nothingness. I muttered some **** back to make her feel bad about it, but ultimately we had to sit down. *****! Definitely not the best grandmother we'd met on our trip (I love you Grandma). But what the stadium lacks in comfort, they so massively make up in atmosphere and experience! It was absolutely amazing. The away team's (Aston Villa) supporters were segregated in the corner near us (they have to segregate supporters to avoid violence, they're all so antagonistic), and from before the game even started to well after it finished, they never stopped chanting and singing! But the most amazing moment, and the one we'd all been waiting for, came just before the start of the match, when in keeping with tradition at Liverpool, the whole stadium sung 'You'll Never Walk Alone' as one. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced, certainly up there with the greatest atmosphere I'd ever been in. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, it sent shivers down my spine, gave me massive goosebumps, even had me welling up tears. It was so amazing that it even does all those things while I'm writing about it! No wonder this moment is so famous. If it did that to me, I actually don't know how Daniel didn't faint. Unfortunately in an upset, Liverpool lost the game. They dominated, but when Aston Villa scored early, they just made it a scrap of a game that wasn't all that great, but I guess that's soccer! I only wish we had've seen a Liverpool goal to see the stadium erupt, but it never came. No matter, it was still an experience worth seeing! After the game, we crossed back to the pub to catch up with Brennan and Luke. It was basically empty - amazing what a loss does! We decided that trying to get a taxi along with 40,000 other people would be difficult so thought that after a round of drinks here the crowd would have relatively dispersed. Once we'd finished our rounds we were ready to move on. Unfortunately it was still pretty busy so the taxis weren't ready for us! We weren't keen on waiting, so we wandered down the street a bit and found a taxi refuelling at the petrol station. With the knowledge that they'd do anything for the right price, we approached the driver and offered him double the usual fare to take us into town! Success; we bought his services! Best thing is, with five of us it actually worked out about the same each as it was on the way to the game! Rather than go back to their own accommodation, which was in the other direction, Brennan and Luke came and dumped their Liverpool stuff with us, before the five of us headed off into town, keen to extend the drinking we'd already started and sharing stories of our travels. By the second pub, where we also had some food, we were knocking them back at a rapid rate! I think it helped that our waiter was awesome and hilarious and made sure to serve us very quickly. We recorded him saying 'b******s' which really made our night! He also gave us some recommendations and directions to a nightclub, as it was well and truly approaching midnight and he was about to close. Dad said his goodbyes and headed back to the hotel (such an old man), and we actually found the nightclub we were seeking and further continued to drink! By about 2am, I was smashed, and actually struggling to keep my eyes open I was that tired. With Brennan the same, we left Luke and Daniel there, parted ways and headed to our respective accommodations. I have no frikking idea how I found my way home, but I did, and to my great excitement, I found a place to buy a burger on the way home. I know I tried to tip extravagantly to reflect my excitement, but the nice lady didn't let me. Thank you super kind stranger lady for not taking that extra money! My last memory of the night was stumbling in the door, seeing Luke in Daniel's bed and saying goodnight to him, before crashing on my own, to sleep. Top day Liverpool!