Friday, July 11, 2008

Travel Day to Glasgow

As I was standing at the front desk at 8am doing the crew checkout, someone walked up behind me and grabbed both my buttcheeks. Turned around and there was my dear friend Janet Taylor. She's out doing tour accounting for Beck, who played last night at another festival on the other side of Lisbon, and she had stayed here at our hotel last night. Even better, she's on my flight to London, so we'll get some hang time at the airport.

Guess what they sell at the McDonald's in the Lisbon airport? Beer…

It was a little too early in the day for me to want one, but that didn't keep a few other folks from enjoying a frosty beverage.

We started with a 2½-hour flight from Lisbon to London, followed by a near 3-hour layover at Heathrow. Spent most of that time in the new BA lounge in Terminal 5, which is far nicer than any airline lounge in America. Everything about it was cool, from the massive self-serve wine bar to the food, the furniture, and more.

Our flight to Glasgow took off an hour late, which sucked, because tonight is our last night to have a little fun before we go home.

Finally got to the SAS Radisson around 7:30pm, where we dropped bags and went to (you'll never guess)…

…the hotel bar.

Budweisers were $7.40 each, which isn't too bad for a nice hotel over here. There appeared to be three bartenders working, but I would only place my orders with Anna, an absolutely lovely 22-year old Polish girl.

Spragoo peeled off to go to his room because he wanted room service for dinner. About 20 minutes later, my buddy Big Al, who runs Tour Supply Manchester, came down, followed 5 minutes later by Lance Wascom from Tour Supply Nashville, our production manager Robert Long and our LD, Sooner. They invited Seth Kendall (audio tech) and I to go eat Japanese a few blocks away at a place called Ichiban. Big Al lived here in Glasgow for 7 years, running a venue called Barrowlands – so he knows lots of neat places to eat.

The food was really good. After dinner, Seth and I wound up back in the bar with Peter Lewis, our bass tech. And we stayed waaaaaay too late…

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