Mummy Diaries | Half term trip to The Emirates

Let’s play catch up and throw it back to half term now, which was the last week of October and concluded in our first wedding anniversary. Since getting Arsenal membership, Alfie has been desperate to go to The Emirates and with tickets like gold dust for Red members, we said we’d go for the next best thing – the stadium tour.

We drove and parked at East Finchley, which saved time as well as money and meant we only needed to use the tube. It was two lines and around seven stops to Holloway Road, where we got off (although you can also get off at Arsenal) and Alfie was free.

There’s a Legends Tour, which I believe is £50 per person, but we did the ‘standard’ stadium tour. This was priced at £27 per adult and £18 for a child (5-15 years). I think we got a discount with our membership though. The cost of the ticket includes an audio guide with Arsenal branded earphones (which you can keep – the earphones, that is!), a personalised certificate (named and dated) to say you’ve done the tour and entry to the Arsenal Museum.

During the tour, we had access to the Diamond Club (the members’ area and restaurant), Directors’ box, players’ entrance, home and away dressing rooms, players’ tunnel, the home dugout (including the plush seats), Mikel Arteta’s office, interview rooms, press conference rooms and the media lounge… we saw it all!

I’ve done a few stadium tours in the past – Old Trafford, Camp Nou and Estadio Santiago Bernabéu spring to mind, and probably a few more – and I really enjoyed it. I’ve actually been to The Emirates for a few games in the past, but I said to Alfie, I couldn’t remember which entrance I went to, or where I sat… it was over 10 years ago! When you book the tour, you don’t need to select a date or time, your ticket is valid for 3 months – but there are tours running all day, and most days too.

One thing I will say is that we had a 20 minute wait for our tour to start, because there was a Legends Tour starting, and obviously they got preferential treatment, so there was a lot of waiting around once the tour had started and there was an area we couldn’t go to, due to that group being there, which meant we didn’t do the tour in the official order.

Alfie enjoyed it, despite not being allowed on the pitch… he thought he was going to be able to and wanted to play football. He particularly liked the dressing room and had his photo taken by his favourite player’s shirt – Bukayo Saka! After that, he kept asking to return to the club shop, because he wanted to buy everything! We got him a long-sleeved training top for football, some slippers (for his Christmas Eve box) and en route to paying, he wanted a hand sanitiser on a keyring for his school bookbag (random!). There were many kits or items of clothing in his size, so we’d be inclined to buy online in future. Again, we received a discount with our membership.

The museum was good too – split into two parts, the older years (I think this was pre-1950, but I can’t remember exactly) and more recent times. It is quite small, and you can easily whizz around in 30 minutes, but it was still a nice addition to the tour. The highlight was Alfie making friends with a member of staff. I saw a photo with Graham Stack and told Ash that he also played in goal for Barnet. The man then started talking to me about that and then asked Alfie who his favourite player was and if he had ever seen Gunnersaurus (which he answered no). He then went to one of the backrooms and came back with a Gunnersaurus teddy toy – so kind. Alfie was made up (he’s even taking Gunnersaurus to school for show and tell).

We even had time to walk around the outside of the stadium, see the statues and other information boards, as well as the canons out the front by the megastore. In all, it was a really good day and I’d highly recommend it… although I think Alfie would have appreciated it a bit more if he was older!

Love, Lucy xx