Hi all,What an extraordinary travel day I had yesterday! This post is delayed due to getting home so late and achieving two hours of sleep! Yesterday morning, Rob and I went walking, got a coffee and sat and chilled out in Boston Common for a while. Then the rest of the day began...Picture your favourite singer in the whole world. Now imagine booking a two month overseas holidaya year ago, and months later said singer then announces a US tour, coincidentally lining up with when you’re in one of the cities you’re visiting. Then - imagine 14 million people signing up for the presale, and after sitting up for the entire night in Australia in a Ticketmaster queue, you somehow get a ticket while so many miss out. THEN - when the setlist comes out, it’s 3.5 hours and 45 songs long. Well this is all what happened to me!I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan since high school, and I’ve been lucky enough to see her in concert at her ‘1989’ tour in 2015 and her ‘Reputation’ tour in 2018 at home. She always puts on an amazing show, and I love that she writes all of her own music and each song has a story and a meaning. And despite all the media crap and gossip about her a lot of the time, she just keeps churning out more incredible music and being more successful.Whilst getting my ticket was an ordeal back in November, getting to and from Gillette Stadium (in Foxborough where the Patriots play, about an hour from Boston) turned out to be an ordeal as well once I did some research last week. There were 70,000 people at Gillette Stadium at each of Taylor’s three concerts, but for some reason only 7,800 train tickets to and from the venue were sold, and no other trains put on anywhere near the venue. So what happened as a result was tens of thousands of cars around the place blocking up the freeway, insanely high parking costs (including people setting up "carparks" in their front yard for $50 US, and just overall chaos. Rob walked me to South Station and I ended up getting a train to a place called Walpole that was a 15-20 minute drive from the stadium. Once I exited the train, many other Swifties had too. Everyone was so friendly and people tried to carpool as much as possible, and I did so with a girl called Ansley and her Mum Kelly. They were both from Florida but Ansley now lives in Boston, and were lovely. We shared an Uber (the traffic was INSANE) and then visited a Bass Pro Store to use the toilet en route. This store had giant stuffed moose and other animals, giant boats, and sold guns. Ansley and Kelly kept telling me I had a good story to tell people at home of how I visited one of these on the way to the concert! Rob later joked it was like BCF at home, but instead of 'Boating, Camping, Fishing' it was 'Boating, Camping, Firearms'! After this, the three of us headed towards the venue and said our goodbyes, enjoying all the colourful sparkly outfits of concert goers on the way. The best I could do over here was my favourite dress and some face glitter from CVS! Ansley had hand glued diamantes all over her shoes!Once inside I found my seat. Mine cost me about $300 US dollars including all the insane fees they charge over here (I think one was $80?!). It’s legal to resell tickets for a profit over here, so the day before the concert when I checked, a resold ticket in my bay was going for $1200 US ($1800 AU) before fees. There were some going for $4000 or $6000 elsewhere too. I’m not sure what’s stupider and more gluttonous - the fact that people are allowed to sell them for those extortionate prices, or the fact that people pay them. Everything is so expensive over here with lots of processes designed to make you pay as much as possible. I’m grateful reselling like this is illegal at home. Even the contrast between here and Canada in terms of extra fees and things you have to pay for is very striking.For some reason I wasn’t allowed to bring my handbag, but had to bring a clear zip lock bag to keep all my stuff in. Yet once I arrived it was barely even looked at despite me seeing them make people throw out their handbags if they were too big. It made for an annoying time having to carry it in mind hand whilst I next went for a bit of a walk further from my seat, and went upstairs. The view from up there was very far away, so despite having a side view of the stage I decided I was happy I was so close to the stage in my seat. Once back in my seat I watched the support acts Gracie Abrams and Phoebe Bridgers. Both were alright but I remained seated saving my energy for the main event!Taylor Swift came on at 7.55pm and played 45 songs over a span of nearly 3.5 hours, with no proper breaks and only quick costume changes. This tour is titled ‘The Eras Tour’ and is a musical history of her career so far. I think she’s set it up this way as since she was last able to tour in 2018 she’s released four more albums so she could showcase them all and some older music too. She spoke about starting to write her album ‘Folklore’ two days into the first lockdown as a form of escapism, so she wouldn’t just feel like “a lonely millennial woman surviving on white wine and 700 hours of TV per day”.My favourite era is ‘1989’, and I found the best part of going to a concert alone (which overall felt strange!) was that you could scream your head off and dance like a lunatic, without giving a crap as you would never see any of these people again. I belted out my favourites and then sat back in awe at the detail of the sets and choreography and at Taylor’s voice. Due to having a side view I couldn’t see some of the props, but I could still tell they were incredible from the screen to the side. At one point she played a piano covered in moss that looked like it belonged in a forest. There was a huge treehouse, trees came out of the stage. And she even dove into a “pool” at one stage too. A lot of thought was put into everything. Throughout this tour before she gets to the final section of the show, she plays two surprise songs that she won’t play at any other concert. For us she played ‘I Think He Knows’ and ‘Red’. I was particularly stoked she played ‘Red’, as it’s a favourite too. She was very adaptable here as the piano she was meant to play 'Red' on was broken due to the rain last night and strangely kept playing keys whilst she was talking and not pressing any. But she pivoted and played the song on her guitar instead and it was wonderful. We were blessed with 23 degrees and sunshine, whereas on Saturday she played the entire show in the pouring rain! In our show she was able to move around more easily and I particularly loved the twice she came right over to our section maybe 30m away from me and waved to us!Getting back was an absolute debacle, and I can’t stress enough how terribly organised the stadium and transport to and from it was. I will never whinge about Melbourne transport after an event again!! Rob ended up hiring a car at Boston Airport and driving down to get me as we had no other choice. It took 20 minutes to walk to him, but after that we had a fairly efficient journey as Rob went the back way instead of the congested highway. However, the hire car place gave him an electric vehicle despite us booking a petrol one. We plugged it in to charge nearby before returning it and it told us it wouldn’t finish until 4am, and Hertz had said if we brought it back not charged we would have to pay a $50 Australian fee. We weren’t having that - we went in and argued with them that they didn’t provide the vehicle we had paid for. The staff were so rude, but we eventually won. It was a bit of a crap end to the night but at least we won against yet another attempt at a money grab over here! Disappointly we've found nearly all customer service staff everywhere in Boston to be rude, unhelpful and have a severe case of the "I don't cares". Despite this we have enjoyed Boston though, but it definitely put a dampener on it.We got an Uber back from the airport and arrived at 2am. I couldn’t sleep until 3.30am, was woken heaps by street noise, and got up at 6.30 to head to Back Bay station for our train to New York. I'm now on the train and am very tired, so apologies for any potential spelling or grammar issues today haha. But I will say - it was worth every cent and every minute of effort to be at that concert. It will go down as one of the best nights of my life, and I sincerely hope I can get a ticket if she comes to Melbourne again next year.Love to allClaireXoxox
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