For our first Wedding Anniversary (3rd September), we went to Glasgow for the weekend to see Robbie Williams in concert at
Hampden Park.We travelled up there on the Friday (with the aid of Pinar's sat nav which we borrowed), and arrived early afternoon. We were staying in the Crowne Plaza hotel which was right on the river side next to the
Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC). The
Crowne Plaza used to be a Moat House and has been recently
refurbished to quite a high standard. There are quite a few similarities between the Glasgow river side and that of Newcastle; The shape of the SECC is basically a cross between the Sage Gateshead and the Sidney Opera House, - there's a link to my Flickr photos at the end of this post.
The building is featured weekly in the X-Factor at the minute whenever they show the Glasgow auditions. There is a also a Millenium Bridge although this is pretty boring compared to ours. The area is oviously one of the nicer parts of Glasgow and it looks like they're doing a good job.After a few drinks, a kip and a meal in the hotel we decided to try and bar crawl as much of Glasgow as possible!! It was a really good night although we did end up spending a fortune seeing as we ended up a Casino and our luck was far from in!
We had a lazy day on the Saturday, making use of the Hotels leisure club until it was time to head to the concert at about 4pm. By this time a work colleague of mine and her husband had also arrived, - Claire and Mark.A taxi dropped us all off at an area of bars within walking distance of Hampden Park, so we sank a few more before heading the stadium.
I have to say it's a very impressive stadium. It's set below ground level, much like Sunderland's Stadium of Light so you don't actually see the stadium until you're right on top of it. Complete opposite to St James's Park which can be seen from miles away!
The 2 support acts were Orson followed by Basement Jaxx which were both really good, - then Robbie came on at 8.30. This was my 3rd Robbie Williams concert so I kind of new what to expect and as always he didn't fail to deliver. If you watched the concert on Sky you'll also know he did a couple of songs with his best mate Jonathan Wilks.
Concert finished at about 10.30 and then there was the usual mad exodus as 60,000 people all tried to leave the stadium at once to get back home or to their hotel. This really is the worst part about stadium concerts but there's nothing you can do about it so it's best just to go with the flow.
As we were walking back through the main car park I spotted the drummer from Orson casually leaning against their tour bus. Jen and Claire got his autograph and had their photos taken with him as well as the 2 guitarists! This really made Jen's night. The autographs were all done on her concert ticket, - hmmm possibly worth anything on eBay?! We managed to find an overpriced taxi to get us back to the hotel but it was better than the 4 mile walk! We waited for 12 o'clock to come so we could see our Anniversary in with a bottle of champagne, then turned in completely wrecked!
Breakfast was delivered by room service next morning along with a big bunch of flowers, - am I romantic or what! We then headed home about lunch time, again with the aid of the sat nav!!Quick wash and change then off to Newcastle for a meal at the Azzuri restaurant on the quayside. By this time I was completely sick of lager given that we had been drinking all through the concert, so I drank wine most of the night. This probably wouldn't have been such a bad idea until we ended up at the Pitcher & Piano and decided to drink shooters...Groooannn!!
Anyway it was a cracking weekend, but it's a good job they only come round once a year!!
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