Orlando

Ann left her alarm clock at a hotel somewhere on our travels so she bought a new one and set it for 7.15 as we wanted an early start to Orlando….unfortunately she accidentally set it for 7.15 this evening so we over-laid! Thankfully it was only by about 15 minutes so we still managed to set off at 9.05am.

Thankfully there wasn’t too much traffic on the I4 (and no accidents) so we got to our hotel by 11.00am. It was a Comfort Suites but certainly wasn’t one I would recommend. There was supposed to be 4 of us there and we were told that we had a suite with 2 bedrooms. In fact the hotel has no such facility and we had 2 double beds (not even Queens) and a sofa which converted into another bed! Also, there was clumps of hair on the bathroom floor, we had to ask 4 times in 2 hours for more loo roll, the coffee maker didn’t work and when we got a replacement one it had a dead spider in it and leaked everywhere!

A & P went out to hit the outlet malls again (yawn, yawn and yawn – I’m not big on shopping in case you haven’t noticed!) so I just stayed in with the dead spider and did a load of work (one of the pitfalls of owning my own business that I can do from anywhere!).

They got back at about 3.30pm and Ann wanted to have a sleep so P and I went to the tikki bar by the pool for a late lunch. Unfortunately they had totally run out of chicken of any description so I had to have a beef dish but it was nice sitting in the sun enjoying the heat for one of the last times until May next year….I’d love to live in Florida all year round!!

We left at about 6.45pm but the I4 is rather confusing with their exits. Our hotel is off exit 71 in one direction and off exit 72 in the other as in one direction there is a gap from 71 to 68! The exit we wanted for the venue was 82B but going east there were only exits for 82A and 82C! We came off the freeway in downtown and decided to ask for directions. The first guy we asked was a winno who wouldn’t have been able to have directed us across the street but the next guy was more helpful. He didn’t know the exact venue but he told us the approximate direction. We had stopped to talk to him at some traffic lights and we were holding up one line of traffic so the car behind us started beeping. The guy we were asking just gave him the one finger sign, shouted “fuck you” and continued to give us directions! It really reminded me of Meat Loaf in Mercury Blues!

We followed his directions bit still couldn’t find the venue so we asked a guy in a shop and he just told it was up one road to our right but he didn’t know which! Thankfully soon afterwards we saw a police car so P decided to ask them. She really laid on the English part (“I say, officer, we’re frightfully lost. Please could you help us”!) and he lapped it up! He gave us directions and then P hugged him – A & I were in fits of laughter. As we set off the police car followed us and then put on his lights at the next set of traffic lights, pulled up level with us and gave us more directions. I looked behind us and there were about 6 cars stuck there (as we were totally blocking the lights) but not one beeped!

We did eventually find the venue and stood outside with a sign for a while trying to sell the one extra seat we had. We had no takers by 8.10pm so we decided to go into the venue (we’d already decided to skip Johnny Lives tonight). Unfortunately they piped him into the foyer too but thankfully it wasn’t too loud. The funniest thing was a guy in a Meat Loaf T-shirt coming in with his hand clasped to his head saying how dreadful Johnny was! The bar area got quite crowded then too.

We went into the hall when Johnny had finished and we had brilliant seats! We were in the second row right in the middle! The stage was very near the front row too so we were only about 6 foot from the stage. It was nice as we knew some people immediately behind us in the third row too. It was a great concert – probably my favourite of all the 30 or so I’ve seen on this tour! I think I also watched Meat Loaf the least I have all tour too as this’ll probably be the last time I’ll be seeing Kasim on stage for a few months. Kasim was wearing this white singlet thing and I don’t know if it was chilly on stage or what but his nipples were very pronounced tonight (I wasn’t the only person in the second row who noticed this either!). Again, as it was my last show, I decided not to take a load of photos but just to enjoy the concert so I only took 4….all of Kasim!

All too soon for me the concert (and tour) was over but not before the band bow when Kasim waved to me and mouthed “Bye Sue – have a safe flight home”! He also threw me a guitar pic then which landed right by my feet!

We quite easily found the freeway to get back to our hotel but unfortunately there was nowhere around to eat!

I got to sleep at about 2.00am.