Saturday, June 29 – Switzerland to Italy & Show Day
Up at 4, I set my alarm for 4:30, but I guess I am afraid I will over sleep. I always wake up before my alarm. Went down early to make sure the bus was here, it wasn’t, but it arrived shortly after. I took all of the breakfast “to go” boxes to the bus. Everyone showed up, no problem. Some even had time to grab a quick breakfast at the hotel before leaving.
Left on time, 7 am, ran into traffic as we seem to every year. The driver informed me its where the 3 lanes merge down to 1 to go into the tunnel, so it’s the scenic route again. The upside to this is they opened a new road and it won’t take quite as long as before. 🙂 Sent Mitch a text as we were going through the little town near the ranch so everyone was waiting for us when we arrived. Keys and everything were ready and waiting for us. We all dropped our bags and headed to load in. Salvina had some sandwiches brought over for lunch, so I took one to Pat in his room. He came over later for sound check. They ran through about 2-3 songs and finished. Easy.
Everyone rested until dinner time. We all had dinner at the ranch. Laura and I ordered a caprese salad and it took about 20 minutes to get it. We had to ask 3-4 times, but it was worth the wait. 🙂 Pat finished dinner early so he wanted to “walk around”. He didn’t even make it out of the restaurant before he was stopped for pictures and autographs.
After dinner Pat had a short meet & greet and a press conference, then it was show time. The crowd was crazy excited and he put on a fabulous show, even was brought back for an encore. After the show he went out and signed autographs for well over an hour. Got to bed about 2 am, very early day tomorrow.
Sunday, June 30 – Home
Up at 4 am again. Boy, I can’t wait to go home so I can sleep! 🙂 Left the hotel at 6:30 am for a 1 1/2 hour ride to the airport. Our driver kept rolling his window down and sticking his arm out. Not sure if he was trying to keep himself awake or if he was airing out his “pits”. lol Got to the airport and we made our way to our check-in counters. Pat was flying to Paris to meet his wife, the band was headed back to Texas and me, back to Tennessee. After the band and I got checked in, they asked if I heard what happened to Pat? Come to find out his wife had booked his flight from the Linage airport in Milan, not the Malpensa airport, where we were. His only options were a 10 hour train ride or wait and fly out the next day. Brad, the road manager, assured me Pat would be fine and would probably hang on Milan and enjoy his stay. I sure hope so. I felt so bad that no one specified which airport he needed to go to.
The band left about 30 minutes before me. I believe they ended up being delayed out of JFK for about 3 hours, and I was delayed out of Atlanta for about an hour. Arrived home to my babies and I was so glad to finally be home. It was a great trip with some rally great people…..til next time, July with Bo Bice. 🙂