✿ 7-11th july : portugal ✿

the one that started it all off.

way back in december after the bournemouth show, we decided that portugal was happening. we told all the guys that we'd be there, so we had to make it happen one way or another. it ended up being the easiest to plan, and we agreed that we'd make it into a little holiday/mini-break for us. just sun, the beach and pool.

the day before we flew out, we were at mcbusted's hyde park show with our lads on tour and were staying in the hotel over in kew gardens - the other side of london to where we had to be... our flight wasn't until around 10am but we had to leave at 5am to make sure we had plenty of time to get to gatwick (a bus, a tube and a train) and print stuff out at the airport. as usual, we left ourselves with a hell of a lot of spare time so we had another posh breakfast at apostrophe - they do the most divine cinnamon swirls and their orange juice is perfection.

lovely breakfast finished, we went off to go and wander/wait for our flight. of course, there was an hour's delay. we had entertainment in the form of a girl who i'm pretty sure must have broken the world record for 'most selfies taken within 5 minutes' - her (i'm assuming) boyfriend looked absolutely done with life.

once we were on our flight, it was fine. we got a little in flight meal which was a surprisingly tasty ham and cheese sandwich, a snack and a little smoothie/juice pot thing. and free wine! when we were coming into lisbon we flew right over where we'd be staying and we saw the festival stage from above too!

we ended up landing almost on time despite the delay and caught a cab to our hotel since we had no idea about the public transport, and neither of us could speak a word of portuguese (apart from 'obrigada'). it ended up being quite a long drive, costing €30 but it wasn't too bad.

left: beautiful drive through portugal! | right: optimus alive posters!

our hotel was so nice! it was right on the river tagus where the river meets the atlantic ocean. the pool overlooked the river, and there was a cute little restaurant and terrace too. our room was more like an apartment with a huge kitchen/living area, a separate bedroom and a huge bathroom.

we went and sat by the pool for a little bit and i braved the water for a while too - first time i've been swimming in years! it felt amazing. i could get used to that kind of life. before it got dark we wanted to go find food, and ended up taking a walk up the river before coming across a cute little riverside restaurant - baia dos golfinhos - just by caxias train station.

because we were obviously tourists, we got given all the starters on the menu before we even got asked. olives and olive oil, lovely bread rolls and butter... not that we were complaining, it was super nice! and inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. we got margaritas (which were lovely, i just couldn't seem to stomach all of mine - probably lack of sleep and too much heat) and marnie ordered pasta carbonara and i got a lasagne. oh my god, best pasta ever. i know, so exotic and daring. but we made the right choice, there was just too much to be able to finish!

//

the next day consisted of more pool time. we got up early to take advantage of the buffet breakfast (oh my god, the cold meats were to die for. why does continental europe do such good meat?! uk, take note please) before snagging a couple of sun loungers. we spent the majority of the day there, before heading out again to find somewhere to eat.

we walked through some ghetto parts but then came across a lovely little park with an outdoor café. we got a ham and cheese sandwich/toastie each and a plate of chips to share. one thing that upsets me about europe is that diet coke seems to be like gold dust - everywhere has coke zero but not diet coke (or coke light, as they call it) though thankfully european coke zero actually tastes nice, not like the crap we get in the uk. after our food, we got an ice cream from the little stall/van by the café and went on another wander. we walked for ages and came across some super cute beaches where i regressed into a five year old and wrote in the sand.

we eventually had to turn back and that's when we realised how far we'd walked, oops. we got a drink from a little beach shack and started our walk back to the hotel.

//

another day, more pool time. we only stayed out for a little bit before getting ready and heading into lisbon to explore the city, which ended up with us getting lost in a park with a terrifying homeless man wandering around, having lunch in another little café. deciding to call it a day and head back to the hotel, we took a stroll down back to the centre of lisbon through something that seemed to be for the world cup with super loud music. we took a break because it was so warm so we sat on a bench for a little while before we saw a tour bus drive past us with a driver that looked suspiciously like imagine dragons' driver... cue a semi-wild goose chase around lisbon to see if it was actually them (it wasn't, it was later confirmed that it was the arctic monkeys) and we ended up meeting some nice people from spain who were in town for the festival too. eventually we did have to head back to the hotel, so we said our goodbyes and that we'd see them in the morning.

lisbon is beautiful. so were our passionfruit smoothie/juice drinks that were as big as our heads!

when we got back to our hotel we got room service and worked out our plan of action for the next day and scared ourselves by looking at some videos of the festival before trying to get some sleep...

//

thankfully we were only a 5 minute train ride from alges, where the festival was, but we still made it later than planned. we intended to get one of the first trains at around 8am but ended up not getting a train until almost 9am. once we got to alges we made our way to the festival site and there wasn't really much of a queue system going on, most people were just kind of sat around in groups, so we went and sat in some shade. a short while later the people we met the day before came along so we went to sit with them, and then someone came to tell us we needed to join the queue because they'd been there since 2 the day before... (okay, i'm not going to judge because i've done much worse for concerts, but when it comes to a festival there is absolutely no need for that? i don't know man, each to their own i guess!) so we end up joining the 'queue' by claiming a spot at the front of this gathered bunch of people. we made some more friends in the queue, who all seemed to be there for the arctic monkeys. thankfully someone had a parasol, so we could catch a little bit of relief from the sun. i'm telling you now i don't think i've ever been as hot in my life.

we decided to go on a quick mcdonalds trip to get a drink and go to the toilet before going into the festival, and on our way back what do we find? that the whole crowd has been moved up into a completely unorganised shambles by the gates to go in and we've lost the people we made friends with. fantastic. we've been sat in the sun all morning and now we've lost our place. but it's okay, because me being me i weaselled my way through the crowd and got to a pretty good spot and i think a few people must have recognised us from being in the queue because they didn't protest, so that's good. there was a girl beside us in the queue who was from italy who had also come for imagine dragons which was nice. the stewards started passing out water and some girls came out with sun cream too.

eventually the first set of gates opened and oh my god, nothing prepared me for it. there was no hesitation, people just lurched forward but i managed to get through pretty quickly and was 4th in line at one of the bag searching lanes. i got through fairly quickly as i only had my bumbag, and marnie was close behind too. then we got stopped at gates further in to get our tickets scanned, and neither mine nor marnie's scanned but the staff could see we were panicking and just took them off us and let us through. thank god! one good thing is that there didn't seem to be too many people coming up behind us so i think they were staggering the entry a little bit, which worked out really well for us.

the actual barrier run after that though, oh my gosh. so there was a 'T' shaped barrier meaning a split down the middle - obviously we have our spot on the left hand side of the stage but as you come into the arena you're faced with the righthand side of the stage so it all seemed to be filling up there and it felt like me and marnie were the only ones running for the other side - yay! thankfully this run was on solid concrete which made it a lot easier than main square festival with it's grit and cobble stones, and when i got round to the barrier there was a bit of space left just in front of our regular spot so i grabbed it (much to the dismay of the girl next to me, sorry honey. you don't need five people's worth of space for yourself!) and we ended up being next to a couple of the girls we'd met too!

left: queueing! | middle: happy barrier faces :) | right: the usual spot (ft. big ass speaker)

i have one thing i want to say right here. festival photographers - why so many and why so aggressive? i say this because with any luck i'll be a professional music photographer one day, but any gigs i've photographed in the past i have always been respectful of the audience. at the end of the day the crowd have paid to see the bands and the music - not the back of some photographer's head. i had so much trouble seeing the bands on stage for those first few songs when the press are allowed to take photos. i just thought it was very inconsiderate, i always try and keep as low as possible so i don't ruin it for the audience. also, what's up with optimus alive not giving out water to the crowd? they expected us to leave the crowd and pay for a bottle of water and manage to get back to our spot - if you're not going to let people bring their own bottles in then you need to provide it for free. we got given a couple of bottles but we had to really, really complain to get them! disgraceful. anyway, moving on...

first up we got to watch ben howard. he's an artist i've always wanted to see live but never really wanted to pay to see him specifically - until now. he was brilliant, and i will definitely be going to see him again when he tours!

next up, the lumineers. they're another one of those bands i've always wanted to see live but could never quite get around to doing so. they were great too! they did this awesome thing where they all came out into random parts of the crowd. they were literally sat in the crowd, up on the lighting rigs, right in front of us in the pit... it was insane! such a good, tight band. definitely will be making the effort to see them again.

after the lumineers it was time for our boys! we warned the girls next to us that we don't hold back, and i don't think anything could quite prepare them for what they were about to witness. i don't think anyone ever really takes us seriously because we're 'just girls'. ha! annoyingly, the big speaker in front of us obstructed our view a bit but it didn't really bother us in the end.

during hear me, the photographers went crazy with us. they were stood in front of us for the whole song just taking photos of us, it was equally hilarious and weird, but in case you ever wondered what we look like at an imagine dragons show, here you go.

when it came to their cover song, we were expecting with or without you or something. nope, they pulled out song 2. i love them but i hate them. it's like they were conspiring against us.

they actually had an onstage discussion about it...

ahh they played so well, the energy was ridiculous. dan came right down to the crowd and ran down the split in the barrier during on top of the world and the whole place was just electric. it was another short set of about an hour but it's up there with my favourites!

i hate that the first one is so blurry but these guys are just so cute!

once their set was over we left the crowd (with great difficulty, apparently people think it's cool to sit down in the middle of a main stage festival crowd) and managed to get ourselves a drink. we had a wander around the festival whilst interpol were playing. we got the greatest kebab known to mankind, and then a massive churro with nutella. heaven. we ventured over to the clubbing tent but there wasn't much going on, it was so empty because everyone was getting ready to see the arctic monkeys. we tried to stick around for the arctic monkeys but honestly, i wasn't all that impressed. i actively like a few of their songs but we couldn't be bothered standing around for a two hour set just to hear two or three songs that would no doubt be played at the end of the show so we headed back to the hotel a few songs in. that ended up being for the best though because we had an awful lot of packing to do before we had to get up at 4am to be at the airport for 6:30!

and that's all for portugal, tune in next time for our t in the park adventure! and the flight from hell...

love,
the wolfpack
xo

✿ 3-5th july : france ✿

'don't let them know we're coming'

this is the one where we decided to surprise the band by showing up without telling them we were going - best idea ever! main square festival is in the centre of arras, about half an hour out of lille. amazingly, you can get the megabus to lille in around 5-6 hours for about £20, which was perfect. we left my flat at around 8:30 so we could be at the coach station in plenty of time to check in and pick up some food for the journey but halfway to the tube station marnie realises she's forgot her glasses. so off i run back to the flat, back up four flights of stairs and hope one of my flatmates got my message about letting me back in (i was key-less). thankfully they did, and off we went again.

i always forget how long it takes to get from my flat to various parts of london as i haven't been here very long and i'm still getting used to the commuting times, so we end up being really early. better that than late though! we sit for a while before hunger kicks in, and thankfully they've seen the sense to open up a sainsburys over the road from the coach station now. i picked us up some breakfast and snacks for the bus and when i got back the departure information for our coach had been put up so we went to wait by our gate. check in eventually opened, we got ourselves checked in and went to settle down in a seat for the next 45 minutes or so. apart from my stomach interrupting us and deciding i needed to go empty the contents of it, it was fairly uneventful.

our coach seemed to be full of absolute imbeciles but aside from that it was pretty smooth going. we drove down to dover, caught the channel tunnel over to france and drove through to lille. we arrived at around 4:25pm, bought our train ticket to arras, grabbed mcdonalds for dinner and waited for our train. we saw so many people who were clearly heading to main square, it was quite fun making a bit of a game out of it. once we got to arras we caught a taxi to our hotel which turned out to be super cute!

we stayed in our hotel for the evening because we had to be up early to get to the festival, we had a feeling this one wouldn't be quite as laid back as st gallen. for once, we actually got a relatively normal amount of sleep!

//

8:30am we were up and ready to leave, and decided we were going to get a taxi because we had no clue where to go. we phoned for one from reception, and was told it would be 9:15 when one came. with no other choice, we sat and waited. eventually the taxi pulled up, we got in it and off we went. obviously due to the festival they had to shut off the road from the main entrance, so the taxi driver dropped us off at the end of the road and told us it was straight down. which it was, but then we got confused about where we could actually queue up. there was a member of staff on a scooter who seemed friendly enough, and he directed us to the right place to queue and told us there were already three or four people waiting, so we joined them. by around 10:30am more people started to arrive, so we spread ourselves out across the four 'lanes' with us being at the front of one of them, of course.

left: the calm before the storm | right: people!

thankfully it stayed dry most of the morning, just a few patters of rain now and again which were actually quite a welcome relief from the sun. i managed to squeeze in a bit of sunbathing time, not that it made much of a difference but it was still nice to be able to lay down in the sun!

eventually the crowd got bigger and bigger and the staff started to organise us into something of a queue. we had a man who was trying to be funny by joking that we were in the wrong queue etc which was not amusing (for us), one of my biggest pet peeves is security trying to be funny by saying things like that. you do not joke around with people who have been waiting all day! pre-gig stress is bad enough as it is without that on top. he was nice enough besides that, though.

then comes the stressful part. they're shouting at us in french saying not to run, if we run then 'bon voyage!' so as soon as they open the gates to start scanning tickets and searching bags, i'm trying not to run but my legs have a mind of their own so i end up doing some weird half run/half walk type thing. then we get stopped at another set of gates, and from here we can see a crowd building up at the other side. the campers. it honestly felt like we were about to head into battle or something. it was mentally and physically draining me, and i could see exactly where we all had to go and i was just itching to get there. after the longest ten minutes of my life, we eventually got let through. the staff and security were once again telling people not to run, but did they listen? nope. well, the first few of us did. we seemed to have a kind of silent pact that we would just speed walk as fast as we could, but then it got to a certain point and i could just hear everyone behind me starting to run, so i ran. my legs couldn't hold out though, i'm not sure why. usually i'm a pretty good sprinter, and barrier runs are usually my speciality. that being said, they're not usually on dusty rubble-stricken cobble stones... and i'm not usually up against athletic french boys. i got about halfway and my legs were about to give out but i could hear marnie telling me to run in the background and i could see the barrier filling up more and more except that one spot we were aiming for anyway - out of nowhere i seemed to gain this burst of adrenaline and i just collapsed against the barrier, some random girl tried to tell me no i can't take the space but i told her that she can dream on, that my friend is coming and she got injured. she backed off after that, i think an angry english accent might have scared her a little bit. either way, i claimed our regular spot right in front of the wolfden and dragged marnie on with me.

so yes, just a bit different from st gallen... thankfully we only had one act to stand through this time, a band called triggerfinger. now, i'd heard of them but i couldn't tell you what they looked or even sounded like. all i can say is that the lead singer looked like tom fletcher (mcfly/mcbusted) in about 20-30 years time, moustache and dance moves included, and the bass player looked like matt willis (again, mcbusted) ate all the pies. their drummer also appeared to be on something, which was highly entertaining to watch.

left: future fletcher | right: fat matt

eventually their set was over, and that meant only one thing. imagine dragons time! we've started finding ways of amusing ourselves whilst watching their crew set the stage up, a sight that's becoming very familiar to us. seeing if we can spot any differences, predicting where their gear is going to go... and of course this is the moment when we realise for sure if we picked the right spot or not. 

close enough! ;)

the music started, they came on stage and the whole crowd perked up. i absolutely love those first few seconds of a show, the lights go down (or not if you're outside, but the spotlights at least come on) and the intro starts up and the energy just increases tenfold and suddenly there's adrenaline coursing through your veins - it never gets old, especially not with these guys. it was a shorter set than switzerland (about an hour) but they played brilliantly, as always. we headbanged, we scared the people around us, we jumped, we laughed and we cried. it stayed dry for their entire set, and as soon as they were off stage the heavens opened so we scarpered from the crowd and went to find shelter under some trees and grab a drink. 

next up on the bill was franz ferdinand, a band i've wanted to see live for a long time but never got around to it. bloody hell, they were brilliant! we stuck around the sides and back for them, got some chips and had a dance along to them in the rain. following them we went to grab a beer and had a wander around the festival for a little bit before the black keys came on stage. again we stuck at the sides and they were another great band. i'm not all too familiar with them but i know a couple of songs and they could put on a good show! after that we decided to head back to the hotel because we were so tired (weak, i know) but we wanted to get as much rest as possible since we were heading back to london and had just over 24 hours before we were off to portugal - with a gig at hyde park thrown in there too!

franz ferdinand

the black keys

//

thankfully our coach back to london wasn't until the afternoon, at 1:25pm, so off we go to get our train back to lille and grab some lunch when we get there. of course, this has all gone too smoothly up until now so our coach is obviously delayed on the way back. about 40 minutes later than scheduled, we're on board and ready to head back to london. we would've made up time on the channel tunnel, but getting back into the uk requires you to go through security. twice. before even getting on the damn channel tunnel! and, of course, someone from our coach has to get held back by security, and we leave without him. still, despite the delay we make it into london at a decent time, stress over packing for portugal and drown our sorrows in chinese food.

another wonderful trip for the boys, with a brief pause in the dragons bubble to spend the night at hyde park with our lads on tour for mcbusted, only to be resumed again the next morning.

love,
the wolfpack
xo

✿ 27-30th june : switzerland ✿

a weekend in switzerland to kickstart our adventures and celebrate my 22nd.

in the early hours of the 27th we started our trip off with an uber taxi (free credit!) through london to get to blackfriars, because we're too cheap for the gatwick express from victoria. upon arriving at gatwick, we realised we were a hell of a lot earlier than we really needed to be, so we spoilt ourselves to a posh breakfast at café rouge. tea, coffee, and eggs benedict. neither of us had ever had eggs benedict before, but my god it was the best decision we could have made!

i was far too excited to eat this!

our flight was rather uneventful, i pretty much spent the duration of it in a weird conscious-but-passed-out state since we hadn't slept the night before and i'd been up since 6am before that for work. switzerland airport has this really cool train that takes you between terminals in the trippiest tunnel ever. once we got to zurich flughafen bahnhof (that's swiss/german for zurich airport train station, eyy) we saw a rather scary looking policeman and a very intimidating train departures board. to save us making mistakes and getting lost, we headed over to the ticket desk and spoke with a very friendly man who advised us to get a zvv card which would give us unlimited travel across zurich for 24 hours, which ended up being very useful!

left: the trippy tunnel! | right: room with a view

we made it to our hotel in one piece, and met yet more lovely swiss people! is everyone in this country so nice? it's such a pleasant change from london. once we'd settled into our room, we freshened up and went out to explore zurich in the sunshine. turns out we were staying just round the corner from the 'technopark' tram stop, which took about 10 minutes for us to get into the centre of zurich by the river. zurich is so pretty and so clean! we fell in love instantly.

we stumbled across vera moda and there was a sale on with some wicked bargains so we did a little bit of shopping, then had lunch in a little starbucks we found hidden away down some cute little streets. we had the most amazing cream cheese bagels and i discovered a cream cheese chocolate muffin?! i'm so sad they don't do those in the uk branches. our zvv cards included a free trip on the river boat so we had a lovely 40 minutes or so riding down the river and taking in the sights. when we got back to the hotel we had dinner in the swiss bistro downstairs which consisted of a swiss cheeseburger and chips - oh my god. food heaven. (except the chips had an excessive amount of salt, but the burgers made up for that!)

//

the next morning we had a little bit of a lay in since it was forecast to be stormy and we had a little bit of a lazy day. when there was no sign of a storm, we decided to head out for a wander. we were looking for party supplies so i could pick up a birthday banner for the festival but most things in zurich apparently close at 4pm on saturdays so we didn't really have much choice. we found their chain of supermarkets and had a look but they had nothing suitable, so i bought things to fashion myself a makeshift banner instead. i guess it worked well enough!

on our way back to the hotel we stopped off at a little boat race event we seemed to have come across, and got ourselves a beer and sat with our feet in the river just feeding some ducks and taking in the atmosphere and the last of the sun. we also found a little play park, which we were probably too old for but that didn't stop us playing on the swings and going on the slide.

we ended up going back out in the evening to find food. loads of places online recommended going to the hauptbahnhof for their array of restaurants and food places, and we ended up getting lost in there for almost an hour trying to find this fish and chips place we saw on our first day - nordsee. we gave up, and ended up going to a little chinese place and ordering chow mein. of course. it was bloody good, though!

later that night the storm hit, whilst i was busy crafting away making my birthday banner. then midnight hit, and i celebrated my first minutes of being 22 by dancing around to taylor swift's 22 (of course) then jumping in the shower. fully clothed. swigging from a bottle of wine. rock and roll? we decided not to sleep since we had to be out of the hotel at 2:30am to get the train to st gallen for the festival. you'll soon see that not sleeping, or sleeping very little, is a common occurrence for us where this band are concerned.

//

2:30am, we're ready and raring to get going. we walk up to the train station by us, zurich hardbrücke, and figure out which train we need to get. we're set to change at winterthur, so we find that train and then notice something off with the information. using precious 3G, google translate tells me that it means delay. of course it does, because this is us and nothing ever goes smoothly for us where the dragons are concerned. again, this is another common occurrence you'll notice. regardless, we make our way to the platform and sit and wait. and wait. and wait some more. every minute that passes, the train gets another minute delayed. it gets to the point where we realise we're not going to make our connecting train meaning we'll have an hour's wait for another train in this random part of switzerland at 3:30am. less than ideal. cue the stressing. finally the train pulled up to our platform (12 minutes late in the end) and we took a seat. the good thing about swiss trains is that they have screens telling you the status of other trains at the station you're arriving into. when we were pulling into winterthur, it told us the train we were originally meant to get was also delayed: good karma! so we rushed off the train, in my very broken german i managed to ask the first person i saw where our train would be departing from and we ran. we made it! st gallen, we were officially on our way. i want to say now that we set off so early because the doors to the festival opened at 6am, and in the uk if you're not there at least 3 hours before that, you're probably going to be at the back.

we arrive at st gallen, and after some wandering and being too scared to ask people, we find out where the shuttle bus to the festival site leaves from and hop on it. we got dropped off a fair walk away from the festival site because the driver got confused, but it was pretty much a straight line and there were loads of people leaving the festival so it wasn't too creepy/empty. eventually we come across the gates, make our way down and present our tickets to the staff. but oh no, it's not that simple. apparently, you're meant to have exchanged your ticket for a wristband. can we not do that there? nope. that's done back in st gallen. cue more stress. it's 5:45am, we're tired and all our ideas of sitting down and napping at the barrier all day have been shattered. nothing on the ticket states that they must be exchanged for wristbands, nothing on the website (at least the english version) states that day ticket holders must exchange their tickets for wristbands either. the only thing on there was for weekend ticket holders. there was nothing that could be done though, so off we went to get the bus back up to st gallen station, where we'd been directed to get our wristbands. thankfully the bus is free, and only takes about 15 minutes each way. we ask someone where to go about these wristbands, and get told that it's at the ticket/information office which opens at 6. that's fine, 40 minutes to wait. we've done worse. no. of course, it's a sunday and it opens at 6:30 instead. so we sit and wait and sit and wait. the rain starts, and there's dregs of people walking past clearly en route or coming back from the festival. finally the ticket/info office opens, and we get told it's the wrong place. no. no no you cannot be doing this to us right now. we've just sat around waiting for nothing. the wristband exchange point is where we got the shuttle bus from, outside the station. in the rain. it opened at 6am. so off we went, got our wristbands and went to wait for the shuttle bus. 'every half hour' the staff told us - except sundays, which they failed to mention. bloody sundays! we were stood under the shelter for 20 minutes before we found out the first shuttle bus wasn't until 7:30. we met a lovely fellow called philip though, who was working on the production team at the festival. we went and had a starbucks to warm up a little bit, and made our way over to the bus when the time came. by this point we'd given up all hopes of getting barrier, thinking there'd be hoards of people already there. i mean, the gates had been open so long already by this point. philip was telling us that its a very laid back festival, and that we'd have no problem. he was impressed/shocked/scared? at the fact we were heading there so early. in hindsight, we should have listened to him, but instinct kicked in and we just admitted defeat.

arriving at the festival, with our wristbands this time, we got straight through and made our way in. as we rounded the corner to the main stage, we held our breath. and held it some more. then we were next to the main stage, and there was nobody there. not a single soul. we just burst out laughing, then went to find some form of waterproof/poncho because it was absolutely bucketing down. philip wasn't kidding when he told us it was a really laid back festival!

it was nice though, made a change from the usual. we had a wander around the festival site and marnie became a target (someone screamed in her face, someone else popped a little milk carton/tub thing at her...) and after a while we'd already seen everything there was to see so we just moseyed on down to the stage when we saw a few people lingering around. and so began our 10 hour vigil in the rain. we didn't really need to stay there but there wasn't much else for us to do, plus we wanted to keep our usual spot in front of the wolfden. we had a dance to the cobana big band, i went and got some chips during the next band (min king?) then there was a band called reignwolf. they drew in quite a crowd, and i can see why! they were awesome.

they came right down to the front in the rain! 'if you're in the rain, then we are too' - cute.

bastille were next, and we'd gotten to know some girls beside us who had come just for them and it was nice to talk to people who understood what its like! bastille were great, i was really looking forward to them. i didn't get into it that much at first but i think that was partly down to being miserable from the weather and the fact we hadn't slept because a few songs in it got really good. dan came down into the crowd for a song (armed with waterproof and hunter wellies!) which was nice, i like it when bands do stuff like that to involve everyone.

after bastille we had to sit (stand) through a band called sportfreunde stiller. by now the crowd was pretty big, so we couldn't do much without losing our space. we'd looked up these guys before the festival and they didn't seem too bad, and they weren't! we were just really tired and every now and again we'd fall asleep... oops. the security kept laughing at us and one man told us to go home, haha. but we made it through, and then it was only a matter of time until imagine dragons!!

at this point it had been seven months since we'd last seen them and as soon as their intro music started we lost our shit. it was all new to us because the last we'd seen had been the night visions tour. this was all the into the night tour stuff. new intro, new set list, new drums(!), and new interludes. ryan said happy birthday to me as they walked on stage, they played the river (which is marnie's favourite song, and the first time we've ever heard it live) and they played who we are, which is one of my favourites and again the first time we've heard that one live. ('they say we're crazy' - literally us). it was so sweet seeing them all recognise us after such a long time. ben mouthed happy birthday to me mid-song at one point, and at the end of the gig dan wished me a happy birthday down the microphone and platz pointed over at us. there was an absolutely magical moment where the sun started shining during 'on top of the world' after it had been raining for 12 hours solid.

check out 4:16 on this video - that's my birthday shout out!

it was such a memorable show, and the biggest one we've seen the dragons at thus far. being the last act of the whole festival was amazing too, there was such a good energy and they got to play a full length set! i'm pretty sure we were the only two without any jackets on, too.

after their set everyone started making their way out, and of course what was already super muddy had turned into what can only be described as a literal mud bath. people were rolling around in it, we got surprise-hugged by someone covered head to toe in mud, then someone thought it would be clever to kick it at us? not cool, man. still, as disgusting and horrible as it was, it was hilarious. until we realised we had to sit, caked in mud, on a train back to zurich for an hour and a half. thankfully there was a man at st gallen station with a powerwasher who was hosing us all down (although don't get that done to your legs, it's agonising!) so we weren't in too bad of a state on the train.

we pretty much crashed as soon as we got the hotel, we had to be up earlier than we would have liked to have been to check out of our room.

//

in the morning we packed our suitcases and said goodbye to our home for the last few days and headed out on a search for a starbucks, where we sat for a few hours until going to get our train to the airport. of course, something had to go wrong here. our flight was delayed by an hour - not the end of the world, thankfully, but still rather annoying and inconvenient! we arrived safely back to london though, and the plane ride was spent playing around on line cam and playing frozen free fall.

//

and that's that for our trip to see the boys in switzerland! it really was a lovely break away from everything and it was a perfect birthday weekend for me.

love,
the wolfpack
xo

✿ an introduction ✿

'i can't believe we're actually doing this' - our most used phrase ever.

yep, we're officially crazy. for those who don't understand, and are only reading this blog because i forced it upon them, my best friend marnie and myself (lucy) took the plunge and went to europe for a band. imagine dragons. this all started at the end of their uk tour last december, after their bournemouth show. we were discussing how awesome it would be if we could make it to portugal to see them at optimus alive (the only summer show/festival appearance they had announced on their tour page at the time) but honestly, i never thought it would happen. then we decided it had to, and the next thing we know we've booked the tickets. but then they kept adding shows, and i joked that if they played one on my birthday we have to go. i vaguely remember saying at some point that one of the only places i wouldn't go would be 'somewhere like switzerland'. next thing we know, they're playing a show on my birthday. in switzerland. of course, we had to go so that was that out of the window.

so as it stood, we were going to portugal in july and switzerland in june. then they announced an appearance in france, so of course we had to include that one because it's so easy for us to get to. i mean, we can get the megabus there from london and it takes less time than it takes for marnie to get to london! it would be stupid not to, right? right. (or so we told ourselves...) and we can't forget the fact that after the bournemouth show, the band's crew told us they'd be appearing at t in the park, so we had to plan things according to that. that makes four shows thus far.

weeks, months of planning and gradually booking things bit by bit, we get everything sorted out and it feels like YEARS have gone by since we first decided we were doing this. then before we know it, we're a week away from our first adventure and we are so unprepared it's terrifying. between switzerland and france, we had two days back in london. after france, we had just over 24 hours back in the country. enough time to see our other favourite band (mcbusted) at hyde park. the next morning we flew out to portugal for a mini holiday around the festival, then to edinburgh for t in the park. you could say it was intense and boy would you be right. i also want to add that during those two days back in london, we may or may not have jumped the gun and booked tickets to their show in belfast in august.

during our trips, we kept joking about going to the shows in hamburg and berlin in august too, because they'll be full shows as opposed to festival appearances. moral of the story: don't joke about doing things because you will end up doing them. at least in our case we do. marnie checked her exams at uni, nothing clashed. that was the deciding factor, we were going to germany. we looked into it quickly and it wasn't frighteningly expensive, so that was that. it took a couple of weeks for us to get round to booking it, but we got it all done within an hour or so and for a lot less than expected...

this is just the beginning of it all for us, and we'll be keeping this blog updated with all our adventures! just so the world can see how insane we are. stay tuned for a run down of our trips so far, and keep an eye out for tales of adventures yet to come!

love,
the wolfpack
xo