My Favourite Stadiums of the world

I love a good stadium, although Christ alone knows why. Here are my favourite 6 I've encountered:

6. Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland

[source]

Capacity: 52, 063
This is a big stadium, where I think Rangers used to play until they got done for being a team of tax dodgers. I'm not sure if they still play there. The lesser known light of this is that Queens Park plays there. They play in the Scottish third division, which means, if you turn up, you get a game. We went along, drunk, one time, and it was fun shouting on the sidelines with 48,950 empty seats around you as watch some junkies play soccer.

5. The MCG in Melbourne, Australia

[source]

Capacity: 100, 018
This is such a pretty stadium, and makes me think fond thoughts of Melbourne, which is the most hipster-filled city I've ever seen. A day spent there watching test cricket and getting drunk, is and will always be a joy, good cricket, heavy drinking and good mates. The following sentence is why I like stadiums. Still, not a bad word to say about the place.  

4. Athletic Park in Wellington, New Zealand

A slightly outdated picture, taken before the advent of colour photography in New Zealand in 2009. [source]

Capacity: 39,000
New Zealand has a lot of earthquakes. When I lived there, I remember being in the bath and an earthquake came and shook all the water out of that bath, leaving me a shivering dry but still soapy. At matches in Athletic Park, if you were on the Millard stand (a rickety stand which shook even in the wind) and a small earthquake came along, it made everyone freak out. It was kind of cool. On this list for that, and because it's now demolished, according to Wikipedia.

3. Redfern Oval in Sydney, Australia

[source]

Capacity: 20,000 (but 0 seats)
The picture above is more recent than when I saw it, it definitely didn't have rails around the edges when I was there. However, it's on this list because it's my old stompin' ground. During university I used to train, and play matches there. A joy, particularly for the experience of being watched during a match by hundred of the local kids and having a chat with the old guys afterwards. It was a great place to watch a match if you weren't playing. If you were playing though, it was a great place to pick up chicks. Although I was stuck in various hateful relationships during my career there, I've always had fond memories of it.

2. Caledonian Stadium in Inverness, Scotland

[source]

Capacity: 7,753
Why? because Inverness is surprisingly ok, if a little isolated. However, it is freezing, it's very northerly, and sits on the coast with arctic winds blowing in. This stadium is right on the most exposed part of the harbour, only half covered by stands, so that on a cold day the wind whips through it like nothing else. Inverness are currently in a position where they can play in Europe next year, and the thought of a team like Barcelona coming over and freezing their nuts off, getting battered by the wind and staying at motels, is a surprisingly good one for me.

1. Hrazdan Stadium in Yerevan, Armenia

[source]

Capacity: 53,849 - 70,000
I went to Armenia when I was working overseas, and can't stop going on about how much I was pleasantly surprised by it. Beautiful woman, nice food, a friendly vibe, and lots of cool things to see and do made it a winner. One of the best things of all though, was this behemoth of a stadium, which we were told has never been full at any event, not when U2 played there, not when they played their first match as an independent country, not when most of the citizens of the city had to shelter there during a war and earthquake. Why is it so big? Why is it multicoloured? why is it tilted like that? We may never know, and that mystery is what makes life worth living.

So there you have it, my half dozen favourite stadiums. The one I want to go to most of all is the famous one in North Korea, Rungnado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, which fits 150,000 brainwashed people to watch brainwashed people perform for their great leader. I mainly want to go there because North Koreans are insane.(Did he just go there? You bet he did.)