Sunday 10 May 2015

EUROVISION 2015: VIENNA

EUROVISION 2015: VIENNA

Day 1

Well folks it is another year, another blog and another load of Eurononsense. I am very excited to be back in the throngs of all things Eurovision, having taken a year out to focus on completing the Edinburgh Marathon last year. 


It was a whirlwind first day, having spent the evening before I left, singing with the fabulous Sing in the City in Portobello Town Hall. I sped back to my folks house when after a quick blether it was off to bed as because my wonderful dad was getting up at 3:30am to be my taxi ride the the airport.

I met up with Andrew at check in and we had an easy ride, straight through security and were spat out into The Weatherspoons Bar at the other side. Everyone knows my rule that when you are at the airport, no matter what time, you have your pint to start the trip so we obeyed my strict rule and enjoyed a wee beverage at 5:00am!! We could not compete however, with the stag party at the table next to us who looked like they had gone for the "night out in Edinburgh and lets not go home and go straight to the airport option" I think the chances of them being allowed to board a plane was slim to zero.



I have never had a smoother transfer of flights than we did on our Edinburgh - Brussels - Vienna flights. Flight from Edinburgh left on time, I fell asleep the whole way and woke up as we landed in Brussels, extremely relieved to discover that Andrew had not decided to force feed me fruit pastilles as I slept. We were straight through passport control into a small cafe for a coffee whilst we waited on our gate number. 10 minutes later we had the gate number and we popped into duty free en route. Imagine my excitement to discover plastic 1/2 litre bottles of gin for 8 euros. As I was paying for my 3 bottles our boarding was announced. We were straight on the the plane and met by the beautiful man who's name I do not know but he tended to our every whim. It is always embarrassing when you are the only two on the place at 10:30am who ask for the wine and beer option whilst everyone else plumps for the coffee and tea but true to form we proudly carried on our tradition. The next thing we knew it was time to descend and we were landing 30mins earlier than planned - we pondered whether this may be due to a light aircraft and perhaps our bags had not made it on but we shouldn't have worried - the bags were waiting for us as we arrived in the hall and then we got a taxi out to our apartment.



The apartment is beautiful. It is very quiet and peaceful which is exactly what we need at the end of the wild days in the Eurovision bubble and much as my photo may make you think otherwise - we do NOT HAVE 2 SINKS IN THE SHOWER!!! (it is a reflection but it is an easy mistake to make) Our host was surprised to hear we were in the city for Eurovision and asked what country we were singing for which caused a lot of amusement. 



Andrew and I headed out for a bite to eat, a local beer and met up with Garrett to go collect our accreditations. The Stadehalle is only 25 mins for walk for us so we sauntered up the road and soon we were bonafide journalists once again. We were given the heaviest press pack we have ever had and much excitement was caused in the emptying of the press pack in the pub over the road. Some of the stranger items had to be the Eurovision Fan, The Blow Up Cushion and the pack of 5 sausages!!!!!!!




We spent the rest of the evening meeting the lovely barman of the pub that is very likely to become a favourite with the press due to its very handy location to the press centre and its down right ridiculously cheap prices :-)  the shot of vodka for 66 cents looks an appealing option. We took a stroll home and Garrett came back to ours for a Eurovision Ireland strategy meeting - or as we know it - let's open the duty free, drink until 2:00am and do a live link to Emma Backfish's radio show!!

What a great relaxing day and with no rehearsals until Monday we have another chilled out day to look forward to on Sunday. It is so good to be back amongst the madness. Stay tuned for day two :-)



You can also keep up -to-date with all of our rehearsal reports and blogs at www.eurovisionireland.net




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