Turn it On, Turn it Up..

And sing along.
This is real; this is your life in a song...
Yeah this is country music.



Moving on to August updates.  I received an excellent opportunity at the very last minute in August.  Sunday morning I get a call from a co-worker asking if I'd like to go to London on Tuesday to see Brad Paisley in concert.  She had bought tickets and a friend was unable to go last minute, and knowing I share her love of country music (us country folk have to stick together overseas!), she invited me to take the extra ticket.  So a day of catch up work, ticket buying, last minute planning, and booking later, I was set to go to London on Tuesday to see Brad and Darius Rucker!

Unfotunately, I had to book a separate ticket, so we both left out of Venice, but I traveled to London Heathrow Airport and she traveled to London City Airport.  This was my first trip back to London Heathrow since my nightmare 5 day stay over Christmas when I got stuck there for the inch of snow that fell.  I'm happy to report this visit was all smooth sailing and I made it onto the Tube (London's Underground) and into the city with no problems at all!  Brittany and I met back up at the hotel that evening after our day of travel.

We had a full itinerary planned for Wednesday, sightseeing, a performance of Wicked, and the concert that evening.  We made it to all the major sites, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, London Castle, Westminister Abbey, Tower Bridge and the London Eye.  We observed most of the sites from the outside as I have already been to most of them and Brittany is planning to go again with her husband.  We took the classic pictures in the red telephone booths and found a quaint little British pub to have lunch before the show.

Brittany

I swear they placed that there JUST for photographs...how perfect with Big Ben in the background!?!



Though I look a little awkward, I have a special place in my heart for bagpipes!



Panoramic of the Thames river with the Parliament and Big Ben in the background!

We made our way down to Apollo Victoria Theatre where we had bought tickets to see Wicked the musical.  I can't express how excited I was to see this show as I had heard so many great things about it and have been wanting to see it for YEARS!  And can I just say, it lived up to ALL of my expectations and then some!  Seriously, such an incredible show with huge musical pieces with such powerful voices it gave me goosebumps.  It was worth every penny we spent. 

After the 2:30 matinee show of Wicked, we went right down to the brand new O2 arena right on the Thames river.  The O2 was an incredible concert venue with a whole village of shops and restaurants built into the venue.  We had drinks at one of the restaurants and then went into the concert.  As we walked down to our seats, which were 5th row, by the way, I thought Brittany was going to have a heart attack.  Our fifth row seats happened to be the first and second seats right next to the catwalk out from the stage.  Have I mentioned Brittany is completely slightly obsessed with Brad Paisley?  So you could pretty much say we were BFFs with Brad and Darius during the show.  I'm talking I could see the receipts coming out of Brad's pockets as he was playing on the catwalk right next to us!  What a night!

To top off a perfect day we took a water fairy up the Thames river after the concert.  We got off at the Abbey, but we didn't make it in time before the Tube closed for the night so we caught a taxi back to our hotel.  We had separate return flights as well so Brittany was up and out by 6am the next morning, but I had a few extra hours of sleep before my 11am flight.  We both made it safely back to Venice and agreed we had a fabulously, musical trip!  Thanks for the invite, Brittany!