I was staying in Central London, I think it was a noon game so I had a coffee and used google maps to navigate how to get there on trains. Selhurst Park is pretty far south. Nice thing about the UK is you can pay for everything with apple pay or google pay from your phone, including all your train fares. so you don't need to worry about tickets on different systems, you just go where google maps tells you and tag in and tag out at the fare gates. Getting to Selhurst Park requires you to get out of the underground and onto one of the suburban lines and here is where you end up
there are basically two pubs in the neighborhood and I started at the one across the street from the station. Both are home team pubs and you had to show a ticket in the home section to get in.
I got there a couple hours before the game and it was pretty empty
they had a patio
I'm not big on starting conversations in bars and everyone there seemed to be there with their buds so I left toward the stadium.
here I'm a block away
and there's the biggest "stand" for a stadium in the like richest sports league in the world.
this is the way to get to the main fan area - the team store and a "fan zone" with the DJamer and bar and stuff. (I forgot to take photos of the actual fan zone, it kinda sucked)
merch samples (I bought a scarf). I didn't get photos of them but there were a ton of unofficial vendors around the stadium selling scarves that were specifically for the day's match. (they were playing rough ridin' arsenal BTW)
right next to the team store you can see where the players park. I looked it up and the Lambo is Zaha's. When I was walking to the station to head back to central London I saw him drive past, like 30 minutes after the match.
standing from the same spot, you can see the Sainbury's grocery store that is adjacent to the stadium.
here you can kind of see how silly close they are:
here's the other CP bar, it's closer to the stadium than the first one. It was a lot more crowded. I checked out the "BBQ" and it was the most disgusting driest hamburgers I have possibly ever seen. I overheard a couple of Americans there and hated them, they seemed like finance guys.
so I left and got fish and chips, it was really popular about an hour before the game
people getting gas at Sainsbury's
I walked around the neighborhood and like a block away it was so quiet. You wouldn't know anything was going on until I saw Aresnal's bus going down a silly narrow street. Here's another shot of the stadium.
while I was away someone else showed up late. I guess this is an owner's car? because they're treating Zaha like a bum, relatively
NOW IT'S TIME TO GO INTO THE STADIUM