As a teenager when I dreamed of my future trip to Europe, the National Football Museum was not on my list of places I wanted to see. I wouldn’t have known that football in England means soccer in the USA and I probably wouldn’t have cared about soccer here either.
Fastforward to my real life; my life of all soccer all the time. The life where soccer balls take up more real estate in my house than my shoes and there is a soccer ball in my perepheral vision at every given minute of my life; the life where we’ve had season’s tickets for our local team for the past 6 years and I can usually name the starting line-up off the top of my head. This is my life in a house full of boys who love soccer and I have at least one big toe on the bandwagon too.
I know enough that we couldn’t go to England and NOT visit the National Football Museum.
The highlights are all different for the members in my family.
This trophy is apparently a huge deal. You have to put gloves on to touch it. It’s the Premier League trophy and the guys were excited to hold it. I can’t remember what the fee was to pose with it, but the musuem was free and experiences like this were a small add on and I think the trophies rotate throughout the year. I couldn’t believe that entry itself to this museum was free and I was terrified we’d knock one of those lions off the top of the trophy and have to pay a fortune to leave.
The guys liked a shooting skills game that was also an additional cost (again not very much and admission was free). They could see how fast their shots were and because we were the first two to try it we held the highest two scores for the morning.
Seeing all the old arcade games was also a big hit. These were a blast to play. Old arcade games are so intricate and I was amazed that these machines still worked!
We all had fun trying to make the right call being the referee in an interactive computer game too! There were also many exhibits giving the history of soccer and tons of memorabilia.
My highlight had nothing to do with football or soccer. Can you believe this elevator? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it! It’s like a funicular and went sideways up and across the building instead of up and down. I don’t even like elevators, but this one was glass and seemed pretty infalliable. I probably could have happily ridden it a few times.
And the playground outside would have been even more perfect if we had a bit more time. We were on our way back to London and I wanted to shop stop at a few more places on our last day in England-I had dedicated my morning to football after all.
(PS. Something that I didn’t see in the museum was also a highlight with the guys. Apparently there is a game in the guys’ urinal with a soccer ball too. You’ll just have to visit to check this one out!)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
Looks fun. I love visiting Hall of Fame museums in the United States. I follow ManU a bit but think it would be fascinating to visit this National Football Museum.
Sounds like great fun! I know we’d love it, but then again we’re all big football fans. We recently went to St George’s Park, which I think your family would really like (maybe not you so much…) It’s England’s main training ground and the tour was fab.