The hastily renamed all star music trip report (Madonna concert and London) COMPLETE - Page 3 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Part three: how are we going to get to the concert in time?
When we got to the dock, the first thing we noticed was how many people were waiting and they all appeared to want to go the same direction as we did, down river, rather than into central London. A boat was due in the next couple of minutes, but I noticed one go past and then the board, displaying the next departure changed, so obviously the boat that had gone past was ours. Great. The next one did indeed pull in, but only about six people were able to get on board, so that hardly helped the situation. OK, we could be here some time and Madonna was beckoning, so I came up with a grand plan.
It basically went like this – let’s take the west bound boat up to central London, stay on board and then go back to the O2 arena and it worked like a dream! We were the only ones to board, having checked with the staff that our plan would work, and got front row seats.
Waving goodbye to those still waiting!
We got some beautiful views as we cruised along:
As we rolled up to the next stop at Embankment, Mark commented on how many people were waiting to board. There were literally hundreds of them. Because we were at the front, we heard the staff being asked how many they could take, with the guy saying that they had over 150 people waiting. They were told that about 90 could board, so there would be a lot of disappointed people. While the people boarded, I was able to get some great shots, as it’s a beautiful part of London, with so many great sights to see – especially my favourite building in the city, the Houses of Parliament.
Our next stop, before heading back down river again, was Waterloo and again, there were hundreds of people waiting. They only allowed 60 on board and, again, while waiting, I got some lovely shots.
Then it was back to London Bridge and a grand total of about ten people got on board. We weren’t 100% sure, but I thought I spotted a couple of people that were in front of us, so we figured we had made the right choice in doing what we had done.
St. Paul’s Cathedral The Globe Theatre – to the right of the shot
Our stop at Tower Bridge gave us a great view of the waterside entry to Traitors’ Gate, which is something you don’t often see.
Then it was back through Tower Bridge…
Once the other side of that, again we speeded up and saw more great architecture, including some spectacular views of the city:
We finally made it back to the O2 arena just before 8.00 and just in time for Madonna, who would be on stage at 8.15, so an e-mail a couple of days earlier had informed us. We walked straight in and went through bag check and my camera was immediately singled out as a “professional” camera, which therefore had to be put in storage. Despite our best attempts to argue the point – I’m sorry, it’s a very nice camera, but my goodness, it’s not professional and the chances of me getting that good a shot of Madonna with it was laughable – security weren’t listening and we gave up.
We headed up to level four, where we’d be sitting and my first stop was the ladies – unfortunately everyone else seemed to have the same idea, so I had quite a wait. Then we grabbed drinks and some popcorn. Here we found flavoured popcorn, but not the fun flavours we’d seen at Tokyo Disney, instead these sounded gross, things like banana… : thank you!
Then it was inside and I was really pleased with our seats. They were pretty much where we’d sat for Queen and Paul Rodgers, just four rows back on our level and dead centre stage. When we came in, people were already hollering, but there was no sign of anything from Madonna, which didn’t exactly surprise me. I don’t know any artist who starts their show on time these days.
In the meantime, I checked again on the BlackBerry for the schedule of play for the next day at Wimbledon and finally it was listed, having tried twice before with no luck. When I saw it, I was devastated to say the least. The girls’ final and the boys’ final, neither of which really interested me, followed by a veterans’ match – a gentleman’s invitational, according to the website, but of the four players involved in the doubles match, I hadn’t heard of any of them. Considering I’ve been following tennis for probably 20 years plus now, that says something. About the only thing that did interest me was the first match on court three, which involved Martina Navratilova, which would be worth seeing. The only problem was there would be no tickets for that, so if we wanted to see that, we would have to hustle there as soon as the gates opened. Not good. It was very disappointing, considering the line-up for today on Number One court had been excellent and full of people I was interested in seeing. I think it’s fair to say I wasn’t happy with that.
Yay, a London trip report! Just what I need right now You got some very cool pics, as always, Cheryl! It's great to see the London Eye. But oh no, there's restoration going on at the Tower Bridge? Noooooo! So much for getting pretty pictures there next week
This will sound totally stupid to all Brits but up until now I didn't realize you guys had Ben & Jerry's in the UK We don't have B&J's shops over here so I always assumed none of the European countries would. Well, of course I was as surprised to find a Ben & Jerry's at the mall near Disneyland Paris, too Anywho, I'm gonng google where to find Ben & Jerry's in London right now!
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Yay, a London trip report! Just what I need right now You got some very cool pics, as always, Cheryl! It's great to see the London Eye. But oh no, there's restoration going on at the Tower Bridge? Noooooo! So much for getting pretty pictures there next week
But just look at some of the photos we got - you can't see the restoration work in those. You'll just have to take it from a different angle or get really close up on the towers - at least those aren't being restored at the moment.
We figured that maybe the show would start at 9.00, but there was no sign there. By the time it got to 9.15, we did think it was becoming a joke. The arena was baking, despite their best attempts with the air conditioning system, and eventually everyone else had had enough as well. After lots of cheering, hollering and clapping to try and encourage Madonna to venture on to the stage, the crowd turned and the boos started. It wasn’t good and something neither of us had ever witnessed before.
Perhaps realising things were getting out of control, the show started about 10 minutes later – and wow, what a show! It was well worth the wait and I think it thoroughly silenced all of the earlier boos.
I’ll take you through the highlights and particularly the parts that I was able to get photos of. The show started with a superb display on the massive screens and went into Candy Shop with Madonna appearing on a huge throne. I was able to snap what I think is my favourite photo from the concert – I was really pleased with how it came out:
Next it was on to The Beat Goes On (featuring Kanye West) from the Candy Shop album, which included a white car moving down the stage to the centre area. This isn’t one of my favourites from that album, but the way she performed it, it did really grow on me.
During the show, Madonna grabbed her guitar on plenty of occasions and the first of those was Human Nature, which I have to say I thought was an odd choice for the show. Not one of her best tunes.
After messing with everyone and starting off with the intros to both Hung Up and Four Minutes, it was into Vogue, but performed to the riffs from Four Minutes, which the first of a number of unique interpretations of some old favourites. Of course, the famous old Vogueing moves were in there as well!
This one is perhaps my favourite Madonna track of all time – Into the Groove, which saw Madonna pole dancing and doing Double Dutch skipping, during which she used an interlude of Jump from the Confessions of a Dance Floor album. By now, my jaw was dropping at how active she was during the whole thing!
The next shot I got was the unique part that she’d added into this section of her tour, following the tragic news about Michael Jackson. There was a medley of some of his songs, along with his image flashed up on screen and one of the dancers did a Michael Jackson routine. It turns out that he apparently signed up to do the tour with Madonna, then Michael Jackson announced plans for his shows at the O2, but the guy was already committed to Madonna and was gutted, so it seemed fitting that he did this. By the way, all of that came out of a newspaper interview with Madonna.
One of the next highlights was Music, which featured the by-now trademark of the dancers all appearing to arrive from out of subway doors. Although I’ve seen photos of this and TV footage of this before, it’s still a pretty impressive scene:
Things then quietened down a bit for the Devil Wouldn’t Recognise You off her latest album, but this version was very simple with just a piano for accompaniment and it was the first time we saw the use of a giant cone at the front of the stage, which featured some pretty nifty rain effects on it.
The next set of photos are from one of my favourite songs off the latest album, Miles Away. I think it’s such a sad song and so it proved to be here, with Madonna once again out with the guitar, with dancers gathered all around, gradually walking away to leave her alone at the end of the song.
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What are they doing to the bridge?
The next one did indeed pull in, but only about six people were able to get on board, so that hardly helped the situation. OK, we could be here some time and Madonna was beckoning, so I came up with a grand plan. 
: thank you! 
We don't have B&J's shops over here so I always assumed none of the European countries would. Well, of course I was as surprised to find a Ben & Jerry's at the mall near Disneyland Paris, too 
Anywho, I'm gonng google where to find Ben & Jerry's in London right now!
I would have found that VERY annoying.
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