Day Six – London Zoo and Palladium Show

Wednesday morning we had tickets to the London Zoo but Rob couldn’t shake a headache and was generally feeling a bit run down. We figured it was from all the activity yesterday and the fact that the weather couldn’t decide if it wanted to be rainy and humid or sunny and frigid since we had arrived.

We had already talked the previous night and had determined that since it had been such a full day the day before that we wouldn’t be heartbroken if we skipped the zoo in favor of sleeping in.

I decided to go solo because I didn’t want to waste both the tickets and I was feeling fine. Plus we had been together 24/7 for several days so a little time to ourselves might not be such a bad thing really. Rob was all for it because as I mentioned before, he is reasonable and frugal and me going without him appealed to both of those aspects of his personality.

I enjoyed it as it was cute but it was a lot of ground to cover. I didn’t get to see all of it but I got to see most of the things I had wanted to before I had to get back because that night was the second Europe concert of the trip.

Rob was feeling much better when I got back so we got ready and headed out. We were a little early for the soundcheck so we walked around a bit. The show that night was at the Palladium and that was right next to Carnaby Street which Rob said used to be really big in the punk rock scene in the 80’s. It had definitely changed a bit since then. It was like the low end of high end shops and just trying to hard to be trendy in my opinion, but it was a cool place to walk around to kill some time.

We spotted the Europe truck at the back of the venue and Rob was fascinated by it because he is big into RC Cars and apparently he and his dad had just built one very similar for his pops. He said now that he might make one of his own and design the outside like this truck (which was his way of saying that since it had a Europe theme, I couldn’t really argue with it right?).

We stopped at a Costa coffee shop for a couple of lattes and then it was off to the soundcheck.

This soundcheck had a different vibe. First of all it was a rowdier crowd. There was nothing wrong with that, except I felt that they were trying way too hard to get the bands attention and it came off as kind of obnoxious.

We were told to sit in our assigned seats instead of being allowed to crowd the stage like in Manchester.

I understand why because the front row seats were practically right next to the stage but it just created a different vibe. I felt like the band wasn’t trying as hard to talk to us and that might well be because a lot of the people were more outgoing than the last batch and were already engaging them.

Either way it was a different energy and no real singing with the band. It was still very enjoyable though and I had a good time watching them.

After we grabbed some really good curry udon and a little shop near the venue before coming back from the concert.

The show was amazing and I was so happy I chose that show as it was John Leven’s (bass player) 60th birthday that night (didn’t realize that when I booked the tickets) and they wheeled a cake and champagne out and we all sang happy birthday to him. It was really cool and I was thrilled to be a part of it even in the tiniest capacity.

I had so much fun and was really sad when it was over. It hit me that night as I was trying to get to sleep that the Europe portion of the trip was now over. I had been anticipating it for so long, I gotta admit I got a little teary eyed knowing it was all done and I no longer had it to look forward to.

Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% over the moon glad that I had the opportunity and the means to pull off this trip to see not just one but two shows. I had the moment of a lifetime in my opinion to get to sing with the band, however short lived it was, and I will be forever grateful for that. It’s just a little bit of a letdown when I put so much of myself into the expectation of this trip and the concerts, to have them be over and know that I may not ever see the band live again.

But I knew that I couldn’t dwell on that because we had two more full days left and more fun was still to be had.

Concert pics in the next post.