London Trip! (Part 2 of ?)
Continuing my storytime with Day 2! and there's lots more pics this time!!!
(click the pictures to make them full size)
Which started off like this, oh dear D:
We woke up from our first night sleeping, the rooms were arranged as 1 double main bedroom and one room with two beds, so xerony and me took the room with the 2 beds, and shirenu took the double. Sleeping was actually really good! I was soo soo tired after all of the walking so I slept really easily, also xerony talks in his sleep, in English!! which he thought was really amusing since he usually speaks Dutch most of the time, and I snore, which unfortunately runs in the family, haha so apologies for that.
We hadn't really planned to do anything today except for the concert, but there was a park nearby that we could walk through to get to some other shops & join the Underground line, and that really looked close by on the map so off we went to the park, and here are some of the things we saw,
Also check out the forever alone tree, it just looks so sad :(
My feet were really aching on the day before, due to the fact I was zipping around and ended up walking around 10KM in the process, plus I thought it'd be really smart to do all this in new shoes which, was not a good idea D: On this morning they were fine though, so I thought I'd be alright, shirenu was wearing her heels for the concert too, and was having a little trouble herself as it took us forever to get to the other side of the park.
But hey it looked really close on the map so we kept going, and eventually walked along this long road, until we finally ended up at Mark's & Spencer's which is an upmarket supermarket with lots of delicious goodies to eat, and after some confusion we also found Greggs, which is a really tasty take out bakery that I had suggested, with lots of UK savories like pastries and sausage rolls and things, very delicious!
Also I must say this was all my fault for thinking it was really close by, it WASN'T and I also failed to mention we couldn't sit down to eat in either of these places, so we had all this food and nowhere to eat any of it, which I was starting to feel really bad about, I had assumed we were taking it with us to eat in the line, or something like that. BUT, luckily shirenu was super smart and saved us by finding us a bench (with a cover! it was starting to rain) to eat our stuff on, which I was very thankful for ;a; thank you!!
I'm really sorry for my fail and killing everyone's feet before we even got there :(
After eating, we headed to the venue, which is the Troxy, an old 1930's movie theatre, converted into a concert venue. We arrived about 2PM and there was some people there already, but not many, so we did pretty good I think :D
Then the waiting game began, haha. The doors didn't actually open until 7pm, so we had a long 5 hour wait on our hands regardless, most of which was standing up the whole time, in the rain so that was pretty sucky, but the time seemed to flow past really quickly, which was nice!
Early on we met an American fan who talked to us, asked if we were using the Garbage message boards, etc etc, we said no even though shirenu really was a member, haha. But he was like some superfan with Garbage tattoos on his legs, even one slightly horrific looking one of Shirley on his calf, haha.
Anyway, I bring this up because of what he did later on, the chat and cut! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at this:
So yup, after disappearing for an hour or 2 he appeared behind us and did the chat n' cut, basically, haha. But a short time after that he disappeared again, and later the line split into 2, and another line was formed at the other end of the venue, and guess who was at the very front of it? haha, he forgot about his new best friends pretty quickly.
Our poor feet waiting in line for 5 hours
Then it started raining, I was trying to not take a pic of the girl with the red hair there, speaking of which, there was a Shirley cosplayer wandering around outside the venue but not waiting in line as far as I could see (that or she was just copying her style from the Special MV) Also the girl sitting there on the ground in the game was getting bitched about by that girl with red hair, apparently she's some kind of French stalker who ate a whole baguette in the line.. I dunno, I never saw that, haha.
We had a bunch of delicious cakes and stuff we had got the night before at the supermarket, to eat while waiting, but none of us were really all that hungry, and then the security people said we couldn't bring any food in, so :/ we had to toss it all out!
7PM arrived and we finally got allowed in, I got felt up, and shirenu's glowsticks got confiscated after the security guard panicked about it, and was screaming GLOWSTICKS!!! across the hall to check with his supervisor, lol. I feel bad though, I think shirenu brought those back from Japan when she was there last :(
Anyway, the plan always was for one of us to head to the cloakroom while shirenu got to the front of the standing area, which totally happened, as you can see from this video:
shirenu was DIRECTLY IN FRONT of Shirley :DDDD like, the person who took this was to the right of her, I think.
xerony and I were so so, pleased for her, because we knew how much shirenu liked her, and to be basically standing underneath her like that, AWESOME. I was pretty close too, but I kept getting pushed back further and further because my legs had committed suicide, and I was finding it difficult to stand, never mind anything else XD but I cannot tell you how awesome it was, the band were playing the songs really hard, and were sounding amazing, with a great mix of new and old songs.
I tried my best to keep an eye on shirenu the whole time, I couldn't really get close, but I was usually looking at the top of her head from far away, haha. I didn't want her to get squished or anything, but I think this large guy was looking after her (lol he almost didn't let xerony talk to her at one stage) but, she can take care of herself :D
As for any downsides? As I was saying my legs had died, so when people were bouncing around I just basically had to put an arm up to defend myself, because I really couldn't join in or move at all, haha. Also the doors were at 7, but they didn't go on until 9, so we'd all been standing for 7 hours before the concert started, and the venue was soooooooo hot, I really shouldn't of worn my hat, I think I ruined it, haha.
Also if you notice in the video, Shirley's voice was really quiet in the standing area, I could barely hear her myself but it seemed really bad where shirenu was, I think it was because we were too close to the amplifiers, and they pointed outwards away from us.
But, regardless, it was fantastic, amazing fun. They've not only still got it, but they sound better than ever, and even better live, I totally reccomend their new album :D
There was a no camera rule that everyone ignored, so I was kind of mad, haha. plus my phone ran out of power, so I could only snap one shot, and this is it \o/
Afterwards, we waited in the line for the cloakroom for what felt like an eternity, and we finally got outside \o/ shi had stuff to sign, so we hung around the back waiting for them to come out. I kind of hobbled off to get us some water because we were all really thirsty, then came back to wait with the others.
xerony helping shirenu with her heels
Sadly for us, they had a lot of family members with them, so they didn't want to spend any time talking to their fans, and just go home, we hung out until about 12:30am, but it didn't look like we were getting anywhere, apart from this one part:
You can kind of see Duke from the band there (I was in paparazzi mode XD) but even though I heard Shirley laugh through a vent at the side, she didn't come out, or went out another exit.
shi shows some love
So anyway, it was way past midnight and we decided to go home, via taxi, because I think the trains had stopped running anyway. shi offered to pay for it because she wanted to wait for them outside and knew we were hurting, so I hailed us a cab, and when it came near the licence plate said fresh... oh wait, no, but we all got in :D
Winchmore Hill was really far from where we were, even the taxi driver was confused, but we got there in the end, even passing by the Olympic stadium and ugly red tower thing, haha. It ended up being £56, since it was past midnight, and really far away, but I felt bad just letting shi pay for it, so I did give her some cash towards it, and so did xerony, so she ended up paying the least... ooops XD
Anyway, so we finally got a chance to relax (the taxi was quite nice too actually, haha) and got something to eat.
Yeah!! :D great day, sadly no sleeping in because we had to see THE AVENGERS in the morning. More on that and other stuff in the next entry \o/
And for another perspective on the first 2 days, check out shirenu's report!!
http://shirenu.livejournal.com/297539.html
(click the pictures to make them full size)
Which started off like this, oh dear D:
We woke up from our first night sleeping, the rooms were arranged as 1 double main bedroom and one room with two beds, so xerony and me took the room with the 2 beds, and shirenu took the double. Sleeping was actually really good! I was soo soo tired after all of the walking so I slept really easily, also xerony talks in his sleep, in English!! which he thought was really amusing since he usually speaks Dutch most of the time, and I snore, which unfortunately runs in the family, haha so apologies for that.
We hadn't really planned to do anything today except for the concert, but there was a park nearby that we could walk through to get to some other shops & join the Underground line, and that really looked close by on the map so off we went to the park, and here are some of the things we saw,
Also check out the forever alone tree, it just looks so sad :(
My feet were really aching on the day before, due to the fact I was zipping around and ended up walking around 10KM in the process, plus I thought it'd be really smart to do all this in new shoes which, was not a good idea D: On this morning they were fine though, so I thought I'd be alright, shirenu was wearing her heels for the concert too, and was having a little trouble herself as it took us forever to get to the other side of the park.
But hey it looked really close on the map so we kept going, and eventually walked along this long road, until we finally ended up at Mark's & Spencer's which is an upmarket supermarket with lots of delicious goodies to eat, and after some confusion we also found Greggs, which is a really tasty take out bakery that I had suggested, with lots of UK savories like pastries and sausage rolls and things, very delicious!
Also I must say this was all my fault for thinking it was really close by, it WASN'T and I also failed to mention we couldn't sit down to eat in either of these places, so we had all this food and nowhere to eat any of it, which I was starting to feel really bad about, I had assumed we were taking it with us to eat in the line, or something like that. BUT, luckily shirenu was super smart and saved us by finding us a bench (with a cover! it was starting to rain) to eat our stuff on, which I was very thankful for ;a; thank you!!
I'm really sorry for my fail and killing everyone's feet before we even got there :(
After eating, we headed to the venue, which is the Troxy, an old 1930's movie theatre, converted into a concert venue. We arrived about 2PM and there was some people there already, but not many, so we did pretty good I think :D
Then the waiting game began, haha. The doors didn't actually open until 7pm, so we had a long 5 hour wait on our hands regardless, most of which was standing up the whole time, in the rain so that was pretty sucky, but the time seemed to flow past really quickly, which was nice!
Early on we met an American fan who talked to us, asked if we were using the Garbage message boards, etc etc, we said no even though shirenu really was a member, haha. But he was like some superfan with Garbage tattoos on his legs, even one slightly horrific looking one of Shirley on his calf, haha.
Anyway, I bring this up because of what he did later on, the chat and cut! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at this:
Click to viewSo yup, after disappearing for an hour or 2 he appeared behind us and did the chat n' cut, basically, haha. But a short time after that he disappeared again, and later the line split into 2, and another line was formed at the other end of the venue, and guess who was at the very front of it? haha, he forgot about his new best friends pretty quickly.
Our poor feet waiting in line for 5 hours
Then it started raining, I was trying to not take a pic of the girl with the red hair there, speaking of which, there was a Shirley cosplayer wandering around outside the venue but not waiting in line as far as I could see (that or she was just copying her style from the Special MV) Also the girl sitting there on the ground in the game was getting bitched about by that girl with red hair, apparently she's some kind of French stalker who ate a whole baguette in the line.. I dunno, I never saw that, haha.
We had a bunch of delicious cakes and stuff we had got the night before at the supermarket, to eat while waiting, but none of us were really all that hungry, and then the security people said we couldn't bring any food in, so :/ we had to toss it all out!
7PM arrived and we finally got allowed in, I got felt up, and shirenu's glowsticks got confiscated after the security guard panicked about it, and was screaming GLOWSTICKS!!! across the hall to check with his supervisor, lol. I feel bad though, I think shirenu brought those back from Japan when she was there last :(
Anyway, the plan always was for one of us to head to the cloakroom while shirenu got to the front of the standing area, which totally happened, as you can see from this video:
shirenu was DIRECTLY IN FRONT of Shirley :DDDD like, the person who took this was to the right of her, I think.
xerony and I were so so, pleased for her, because we knew how much shirenu liked her, and to be basically standing underneath her like that, AWESOME. I was pretty close too, but I kept getting pushed back further and further because my legs had committed suicide, and I was finding it difficult to stand, never mind anything else XD but I cannot tell you how awesome it was, the band were playing the songs really hard, and were sounding amazing, with a great mix of new and old songs.
I tried my best to keep an eye on shirenu the whole time, I couldn't really get close, but I was usually looking at the top of her head from far away, haha. I didn't want her to get squished or anything, but I think this large guy was looking after her (lol he almost didn't let xerony talk to her at one stage) but, she can take care of herself :D
As for any downsides? As I was saying my legs had died, so when people were bouncing around I just basically had to put an arm up to defend myself, because I really couldn't join in or move at all, haha. Also the doors were at 7, but they didn't go on until 9, so we'd all been standing for 7 hours before the concert started, and the venue was soooooooo hot, I really shouldn't of worn my hat, I think I ruined it, haha.
Also if you notice in the video, Shirley's voice was really quiet in the standing area, I could barely hear her myself but it seemed really bad where shirenu was, I think it was because we were too close to the amplifiers, and they pointed outwards away from us.
But, regardless, it was fantastic, amazing fun. They've not only still got it, but they sound better than ever, and even better live, I totally reccomend their new album :D
There was a no camera rule that everyone ignored, so I was kind of mad, haha. plus my phone ran out of power, so I could only snap one shot, and this is it \o/
Afterwards, we waited in the line for the cloakroom for what felt like an eternity, and we finally got outside \o/ shi had stuff to sign, so we hung around the back waiting for them to come out. I kind of hobbled off to get us some water because we were all really thirsty, then came back to wait with the others.
xerony helping shirenu with her heels
Sadly for us, they had a lot of family members with them, so they didn't want to spend any time talking to their fans, and just go home, we hung out until about 12:30am, but it didn't look like we were getting anywhere, apart from this one part:
You can kind of see Duke from the band there (I was in paparazzi mode XD) but even though I heard Shirley laugh through a vent at the side, she didn't come out, or went out another exit.
shi shows some love
So anyway, it was way past midnight and we decided to go home, via taxi, because I think the trains had stopped running anyway. shi offered to pay for it because she wanted to wait for them outside and knew we were hurting, so I hailed us a cab, and when it came near the licence plate said fresh... oh wait, no, but we all got in :D
Winchmore Hill was really far from where we were, even the taxi driver was confused, but we got there in the end, even passing by the Olympic stadium and ugly red tower thing, haha. It ended up being £56, since it was past midnight, and really far away, but I felt bad just letting shi pay for it, so I did give her some cash towards it, and so did xerony, so she ended up paying the least... ooops XD
Anyway, so we finally got a chance to relax (the taxi was quite nice too actually, haha) and got something to eat.
Yeah!! :D great day, sadly no sleeping in because we had to see THE AVENGERS in the morning. More on that and other stuff in the next entry \o/
And for another perspective on the first 2 days, check out shirenu's report!!
http://shirenu.livejournal.com/297539.html