The Day I Went To...............

[10ClarionSt]

...... a world famous venue. There's got to be lots of tales about this. Did it go to plan? Was it a disaster,or perhaps a big disappointment? Maybe a lot better than you expected? Maybe just a comical experience? Here's one of mine. The London Eye. We didn't go for this. My daughter was playing in the Festival of Music for Youth, Royal Festival Hall, July 2001. The London Eye is right next to the RFH, so we decided to try and get on it. No luck. The guy said we must book 2 weeks in advance. Having stayed overnight, we arrived at the RFH to see a queue for the LE. They had opened the office for same day bookings. Great! We got in line, got to the booth behind 2 boys aged about 13/14 but they weren't allowed on without an adult. I said they could get on with us. Great! Did we have any disabled in our party? Yes, my wife. Well, she rides for free! Woo hoo! Did she have a carer with her? Yes, me. Well, you go free too! Double woo hoo! Did we have any senior citizens? Yes, my uncle. He goes on half price! Yabba dabba doo! Three of us on for a total of £6.75 and 2 very happy, grateful youngsters. Winner! It gets better. As we joined the long queue, a member of staff was asking if anyone was disabled? Yes, my wife. Come with me. She took us to the front of the queue, along with the 2 boys, stopped the London Eye so we could get on, then off we went! What a result! A great experience. Never to be forgotten. And my daughters band went on to win the contest and subsequently played at the Royal Albert Hall in November in the grand concert of the National Festival of Music for Youth, where she played the opening solo for the concert, which is shown on the opening of the video for the evening. Great times that the young people will always remember. And us!

[wolf63]

Sounds like you had a good day out. Is your daughter still musical?

I didn't realise that the London Eye had been open that long - went to Wiki and discovered that it opened in 2000 (where does time go?)

[Maydup]

The day I went to a world famous venue .... It was in London but I needed my passport.

My friend worked at Buckingham Palace and we met up for lunch. We'd planned it in advance, that if I filled in a stack of forms some weeks before, waited for a security check and brought my passport, we could go inside for lunch in the staff canteen. It wasn't like many other staff canteens I can tell you!

Lovely menu, beautiful furniture and a view over the lawn from the window. I had quiche and chips!

[mikey4444]

In 1994, I made my first coast-to-coast trip in the States. On the way back to Boston, I stopped in the Black Hills of South Dakota for 2 nights, as I have always wanted to see Mount Rushmore.

The Black Hills themselves were wonderful. But Mount Rushmore was a huge disappointment. I was a bit miffed that you couldn't get really close to it. If it had been in Switzerland, it would have had a chairlift or cable car but the visitor centre is at least 2 miles away. So this huge monument was so small and insignificant-looking.

I would say that its worth seeing but not worth going to see, if you get my drift !

But the Needles Highway nearby made up for the disappointment.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=needles+highway&rls=com.microsoft:en-GB:%7Breferrer:source?%7D&rlz=1I7ADFA_en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCEQsARqFQoTCMSMnonY9sYCFcE6FAodScgGpw&biw=1024&bih=726

[murraymints]

trevi fountain is not the widescreen panoramic monument that Frank Sinatra chucked his coins in !! ...teeny thing up a side street surrounded by buildings..good pizza there though !

[gness]

Knowing how much I love the work of Thomas Hardy MrG intended to surprise me by driving me to see Hardy's Monument.....

Research would have told him this is a monument to Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy of kiss me Hardy fame...... :-(

[tonyav]

Did you have a pizza from one of those hole in the wall places, minty ?.

[murraymints]

yup Tony..to the right of the fountain on the wee raised pavement..fab !!!

[murraymints]

and Golden Gate bridge..is Red !!

[tonyav]

So did I minty, lovely pizza.

[murraymints]

Sliding doors Tony..if our eyes had met over the pizza ..well....lol

[tonyav]

Yep, sliding doors minty.

[mikey4444]

MM....its called the Golden Gate Bridge because it spans the Golden Gate strait, the mile-wide, three-mile-long channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

And San Francisco is a wonderful destination...the most picturesque of American cities, with the best Chinese food you have ever had !

[wolf63]

We went to Belgium when we were teenagers and we went on a sightseeing tour around Brussels. We were keen to see the statue of the wee boy having a pee.

The Manneken Pis was such a disappointment - we were expecting to see a large statue, a daring statue - the wee lad was only about two foot tall.

Being two stupid sixteen year old girls we laughed/giggled at it anyway.

[Canary42]

On a very wild, wet and windy day shortly after it opened I went up the Spinnaker Tower (Portsmouth).

In the viewing gallery there were several buckets spread about catching the drips coming in.

[Zacs-Master]

The new Wembly stadium isn't a patch on the old. Old Trafford is a better ground (do you know how much strength I had to summon up to,say that? I'm a Leeds supporter).