It’s grand final day! And indeed it’s also our final grand day here in Liverpool. Awww.

The day got off to a simple start, brekky downstairs at the hotel. Perry’s still feeling a little bit blah so he went back to room for a bit more rest. I figured it was as good a time as any to get another batch of washing done. It would’ve been great if I hadn’t missed the bus by a few minutes (to save maybe 20% of the journey) but slow and steady wins the race, and walked all the way to the laundrette.

On the way there was a big choir singing ABBA tunes so that was a lovely diversion. The city is laying so many cultural events and bits and bibs for Eurovision, it’s fantastic.

Washing on and it’s time to wander down to Costa a coffee for a cold drink. It’s only 14 degrees but it was warm in the sun! I had a a still (ie America style) lemonade, dunno why I was so amused that good part is drink is good old natural council pop – ie after the ice and flavouring he filled the rest with tap water. 🙂 Still tasted good though, and nice to sit down while the washing was busy getting itself all dizzy going around and around.

On the plus side, I was able to use the app to reserve a washer at the laundrette ahead of time – and when I got there I didn’t even need it, two of the three machines were free – nice!

Returning to laundrette I found all the machines in use, so yay for turning up when I did. The excitement of washing day, am I right 🙂

While that was doing its thing I took a stroll around on a gorgeous spring day and took photos of some nice old buildings.

The only downside was that the dryer didn’t do much of a job of drying so i had to lay everything out around the hotel and hope for the best (spoiler alert, it’s still kinda damp)

On one the quick rests I took on the way back, a gentleman asked if I was expecting anyone else on the bench and could his wife sit down – so I ended up having a conversation with a wonderful older couple, locals, well local enough. Back in the day he was an apprentice working on the ferry ‘cross the Mersey, so it was great to hear some of his stories from back in the day. Every local person I’ve run in to has been nothing but lovely , even our Uber guy ti the train station was all “thanks so much, you take care, and safe travels ok gents” – but, I think he actually meant it. There just seems to be this very deep seated sense of care that running through the heart of Liverpool. Sure some of the Aussies we’ve met who are staying out of town have some different stories, and maybe we’ve just been lucky, but everyone has been so ridiculously nice. More please!

Back at the hotel I packed as much as I could, knowing that we’d have to leave after way too little sleep. (It’s self inflicted bad travel planning). Perry has already headed off the arena nice and early to hopefully get a great spot to stand. Once packed I had myself a little disco nap to try and prepare for what was to come. Then I got ready (I even more something shiny), smashed down a Big Mac and then on to the show!

I was queueing with some lovely people from Huddersfield and Manchester that were great fun to hang around, it helped the time pass quickly, and soon it was in to the nownfsmilar routine of queue, wait, queue again, wait, and into the Arena. Pretty much everyone has stepped up their costume game – it was lovely to see everybody really going all-out for such a huge event. And one legend with a Hannah Waddingham mask 🙂

I found Perry pretty quick, right at the back of the room near the “Green room” area, and more importantly, at a barricade we could lean on for the next 6 or so hours. It was great to again see some the other Aussies we’d met up with on other days. (Hey Paul!)

Eurovision Grand Finals are definitely a marathon, not a sprint, a test of endurance where you have to plan rehydration, food, all that important stuff. I was really flagging about three hours in til I went off and grabbed myself a big drink of sugary lemonade. Energy restored, and trying to ignore my aching feet, it was on with enjoying the show.

Is it weird to say it was, in a way, slightly anti- climactic? At least at the start, seeing all the acts that we’d seen before, though of course was a treat to be again able enjoy songs from Croatia (bonkers), Austria (Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe), Belgium (very catchy), Finland (CHA CHA CHA!!!), and of course Australia.

The mid-show entertainment was nice, though to be honest it was marred a bit by fans of one country that had no interest in any of the goings on that didn’t strictly involve them. We were right near their green room so they spent a lot of time shouting and trying to get the attention of their act. It just seemed a little disrespectful to me to be doing that during a particularly heartfelt rendition of Liverpool’s unofficial (or official, who knows?) anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone. Nearly everyone in the arena was having A Bit Of A Moment, but, not all. I admit was a little bit happy when this country’s act did not win.

It was great to see so many previous participants returning for one of the interval acts – Netta, Sonia (UK 1993), and a joy that Dadi Freyer finally got to the stage after covid derailed them two years in a row. They didn’t disappoint. And of course Ukraine’s Vera Seduchka with her banger ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’, and I’m totally sure she didn’t intentionally mean for it to sound like ‘Russia Goodbye’. Surely not.

Also great was seeing the incredible camaraderie in the green room – countries visiting other countries, Kaarija from Finland serving drinks to the Australians, it was hilarious, and showed there was a lot of love in the room. Here’s some bits and pieces from the night.

Inevitably it was then time for the most important/stressful part – the scoring. Actually it wasn’t that stressful because we know Australian won’t win. But as always there were some big surprises along the way.

(Spoiler alert just in case you’ve been living under a rock)

It was a real thrill when I think two countries gave their 12 points to Australia, and I’m glad that we’d chosen to give our 12 points to Belgium. The atmosphere in the room was electric, perhaps the biggest shock of all was when Greece didn’t give 12 points to Cyprus. Eurovision will never be the same again.

To cut a long story short it ended up as a bit of a race between Finland and Sweden for first place. But when the jury vote was combined with the “televote” (ie votes from all the punters at home), there was one clear winner, and that was the favourite all along: Sweden. I would’ve like Finland to win, but Sweden deserved it.

Other happy things: nobody received the dreaded ‘nul points’, though Germany came pretty close with I think 3 points. This also means the UK didn’t come last, though they didn’t do very well at all this year.

After a somewhat gruelling but incredible 6 hours in the arena it was finally time to head home, knowing we’d only get about 5 hours sleep — we didn’t want to take any chances so we left tons of time to get to the station the next day knowing things might still be a bit random after todays train strike.

But, that’s it – Eurovision done and dusted! What an incredible experience to be a part of, hard to describe and definitely hard to beat. I’m so incredibly glad it finally came to be.

Too late to tell you all about it sorry, so I’ll work on todays post tomorrow. I’ll only have had about 5 hours sleep so don’t expect the greatest of quality, at least for the first draft. No rest for the wicked! I’ll leave to final word to Danny from Voyager.

It was another slow start to the day after last nights incredible semi final. Did I mention that Australia qualified for the Grand Final? Australia qualified for the Grand Final!! There are still a ton of very happy Australians here in town – as we should be!

We had nothing particular on the agenda, probably a good thing we weren’t in a rush as breakfast at Albert Dock was more like brunch by the time it arrived, but it was delicious so all good there, and the delay also gave me time to FaceTime my Dad to say hello. There was also a nice bit of art/protest near the Tate gallery which I really liked.

We had received really glowing reviews about the British Music Experience in the Cunard building, however since it didn’t open ‘til Midday we walked up to the Mersey Ferries terminal, to see if could, indeed, get a Ferry ‘cross the Mersey. And indeed, we could! They had a one hour tour that goes up and down and has a bit of info along the way, which sounded perfect. After arguing with a recalcitrant ticket machine (it gave us one ticket for the 12th, and one stuck in there from the 9th!), we had some human intervention – the staff member opened the machine and pulled out a wedge about 20 tickets that become stuck in there – I wonder how many people just paid their £12, didn’t get a ticket, shrugged and walked away? Anyway we had our tickets so that the main thing, and the member of staff that helped us assured us that this particular matching was due to be replaced very soon, hopefully by a ticket dispensing matching that actually, you know, dispensed tickets 🙂 Walking up here was of course also an excuse to get another photo of two of the Three Graces, this time with a bonus Superlambanana.

There was a short wait for the ferry so I entertained myself by watching all the seagulls down in the water arguing over the remains of docks past, there seemed to be a hierarchy of who gets to sit on what rotted log and at what time, in a way it was reminiscent of the sealions squabbling at San Francisco all those years ago.

The Ferry, playing its eponymous theme tune, arrived and before long we were on board (affording yet another shot of the Royal Liver building). The ferry is quite a pretty looking thing, in its own way.

We saw a few sights, learned a few things. One of the most striking additions to the riverside would have to be, of all things, a ventilation tunnel for the road and rail tunnels that run under the river. To me it has a super-eastern-Europe kinda cold-war-era industrial aesthetic – so not exactly pretty, but certainly makes it mark.

We also saw the arena where Eurovision is being held.

As we took the stairs down to the lower level to exit the Ferry ‘cross the Mersey, it was super helpful to see a poster in the stairwell advising that you could actually book a trip on a Ferry ‘cross the Mersey. Who knew?! 🙂

The British Music Experience is in the Cunard building (the middle of the Three Graces). This puts it very much within the roped-off EuroVillage. So we joined the queue for the village, and within a few minutes we were in. The cafe was a lovely room with a very cool and quite literal take on pop music. There was a quite of queue of people wanting to take photos with the Beatles sculptures outside, so I only about to sneak one pic in between people – almost completely chopping off Ringo in the process. Sorry Ringo!

Into the Experience we went, and … well the people absolutely raving about it might just have been over-egging the pudding a little bit. It was kinda interesting, not that big, but sure did have some interesting artefacts on display like Sam Ryders jumpsuit from his massive Eurovision performance last year. Everything else was behind glass so there are plenty of reflections in the photos that I did manage to take.

Just before we left they did have a fun 10 minute video about a bit of Eurovision history. Overall, though, the British Music Experience gets a solid “well, it’s ok” from me.

At this point Perry opted to go home for a nap to conserve energy for the Grand Final tomorrow. I wandered into town, had some more of the legendary Greggs sausage rolls for lunch, and sat outdoors to eat them. Literally 2 second after sitting down, some one came up trying to sell me (fake no doubt) Apple AirPods out of his pocket. Two seconds. I politely declined, and instead focussed my time on the delicious flaky pastry and tasty hot meat (let’s assume it’s meat, you just never know with any sausage roll) filling. It was then back to the hotel for a bit of downtime, knowing that the Grand Final is tomorrow, and it goes about twice as long as the other shows we’ve been to. That’s a lot of standing. While wandering back to the hotel, saw this very cool Lennon-sequel Rolls Royce that I think they use for super-expensive Beatles tours. Pretty!

I also saw this lovely picture.

A little later on, I headed out for dinner. Perry is feeling a little under the weather, so decided to stay in. I wandered down to party town – not as far as the EuroVillage, but part of the way where there’s plenty of people and food trucks, around the Albert Dock and the other ones. Bought a very traditional English hotdog, and some mildly underwhelming haloumi fries from a Greek food truck. They took about twenty minutes, but I should be grateful, some people had been waiting around an hour to get their meal. I think there was a bit of a “when a team doesn’t get along” vibe, so nobody seemed to be having a great time. Still, I was having a great time, coz after that I had ice-cream – and the real joy came from the fact that even though they love to drizzle entire soft server with raspberry sauce here, somehow, I didn’t wear it! (Unlike every other time I’ve had ice cream here lol)

Along the way I also encountered a yellow submarine pumping out dance music, because of course that’s perfectly normal. It was fun!

As I finally turned around to head back to to hotel, I of course had to take a pic of Liverpool by sunset. Lovely.

That’s about it for the day. Tomorrow, good things and meh things. The Grand Final (OMG OMG OMG!!!!) and packing to get ready for an early exit the day after that. But more to the point, the Grand Final!!

It’s been great watching the story unfold between ‘our own’ Beto (one of the Aussie fan club members) and Kaarija from Finland. They look uncannily alike, to the extent where a BBC reports actually mistook our Beto for the real Kaarija , and interviews him on the telly. Some of that saga is here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-merseyside-65547620

I’m delighted to say that yes, they finally did get to meet, which was just awesome. I think that’s one of th lovely community things about the Eurovision crowd – the stars aren’t always holding themselves high above the crowd, most are happy to mix and get amongst it, which is really nice. And dare I say for many, outside Eurovision, perhaps they’re not all such famous stars in the outside world so they don’t have a big staff of minders and security marking their every step.

Anyway. Liverpool put on its best weather – it was raining. But luckily it cleared up just in time to walk to the Arena. It was the usual hurry-up-and-wait, but it felt like for many people if was their first show so a lot of excitement in the air. Thought I must admit it was funny, after seeing them get through the security check so any of them went sprinting off, thinking they were going to get a great standing position in the arena, only to realise a bit later on that no, they had successfully sprinted only to the next place where everybody to wait together, not in a queue, so rushing gave them basically no advantage at all. They’d not read the Tortoise and the Hare, obviously. 🙂

Eventually the stadium doors themselves opened, and with cautionary shouts of “DO! NOT! RUN!” from the staff, all the bring young things ran as fast as they could into the stadium .. again to find that through the doors everyone gets lumped together again ready to take the stairs down to the actual stadium floor. I took my time and, pretty much by luck I think, manage to get one of those very rare spots that only had someone short-ish like me in front, somehow I managed to be one person from the front, at the side of the pointy-outy bit of the stage, I couldn’t have been much happier with that.

Perry chose to hang out at the back of the arena again like last night, it is a great way to soak up the whole atmosphere of the place and to get a wide view of the performances.

This time around, the stakes are higher as all us Aussie Eurovision fans are now quite emotionally invested in the success of our entry, “Promise” from Perth band Voyager. The song is a banger, the presentation last night at the preview was brilliant, so all we can hope is that it will give us enough votes to drag us over the line into the Grand Final. It’s always a challenge for Australia because I’m sure there’s a big “They’re not European so I’ll never vote for them” contingent in Europe (I mean, can you blame them, really?), and we don’t have any other countries to depend on for some good old fashioned bloc voting (Hi there, Greece & Cyprus!). So despite having the odds stacked against us, I know they’ll give it their all, and hopefully turn out triumphant. (See – that’s exactly the same thing you can say about your favourite team on Grand Final day – it’s the same thing, only with a few more sequins.)

As for the performances – just like last night, the bad ones were bad and the good ones were even a little bit more epic, due to every performer knowing this was their last chance, to give it their all, in the hope of making it to the grand final. Unlike last night, this time the votes very much mattered. All the people out there in television land have the futures of these musicians held in their little voting fingertips. There was no jury of professionals taking part in who moves to the grand final, it was to be decided purely on the popular vote. This doesn’t usually do us any favours.

The last act to perform was Australia, and it was a thrill to see the whole crowd get very much into it singing along, and giving them an enormous cheer at the end, which was a really good sign. Then it was time for the voting to open and for the interval acts to start. They were the same as last night so I took this as my chance to get some water (I was parched as!), and then make my way to the back of the room where Perry was, hanging out right next to the Australian delegation’s Green Room area, to lend out support.. There were tons of aussies there this time including the bit of the Aussie Eurovision family we’d met before, which was great. The band appreciated us all being there too, stepping forward and saying hi to let us know they knew the fan base was there 🙂

Man, when it came to reading out the results it was kinda nerve-wracking – because you just never know if it’s gonna work out or not. To try and do a bit of a fake-out, there were always two camera crews in front of two different countries before each announcement, so you wouldn’t instantly know which one was going to be announced as the winner. Australia had the camera crew in front once but then another country was announced … and then again other countries would be announced, and we’re all getting in to a bit of a nail biter.

Next minute…Australia! There it is! It was like winning the Olympic bid or something – our little corner just lost it, so did the band, there was this explosions of Eurovision joy, and all the people around in the crowd being super gracious and giving us their congratulations as well, it was just the happiest, most joyous thing ever. The band were quite clearly over the moon, as were we, and really could there have been a better way to end the night. Talk about leaving on a high. And then getting roped in to be typical raucous Aussies for some British TV programme – all good fun.

Even after we’d grabbed a bit to eat and returned to to the hotel room, you could still hear people walking past singing the Australian Eurovision song. The key lyric of the song is – “Promise me it’s gonna be alright”. They did, and, it was. Much more than just alright.

After last night, it probably goes without saying that today did not get off to an early start. However we were still up and out the door by 9:30 – no rest for the wicked! There was even time for a very tasty breakfast.

Today we had the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ organised by someone in the fan club so there was at least a bunch of us that new each other. It was, of course, a Beatles-themed tour

It was really interesting, taking through as number of Beatles-important sites like where some of them had lived, where they practised, where they gained their inspiration. They let us all off the bus a number of times to get some photos. The tour guide was hilarious, and he’s met Paul McCartney which is kinda cool. Well worth it for a fun trip and bit of Beatle-y education in the mix. It must be a real pain living in some of these houses though, with tourists coming by every 30 minutes to take pictures!

The tour finished in the middle of Liverpool, and for lunch we decided to sample one of those great British dining instructions: Greggs 😀 I can see why they’re so popular though, their sausage rolls are fantastic!

After lunch we had no pressing commitments til the evening, so back to the hotel so I could catch up on my blogging homework and Perry could get a preparatory snooze in for the night ahead. As of right now (4pm) the weather’s looking pretty grim, so this might be a new kind soaked-through-to-the-skin Eurovision experience (as you’re not allowed to bring umbrellas) – ah well guess we’ll see – what an exciting cliffhanger to end on 😀

I know I will be too worn out to write up the show just after we see it, so again I’ll leave that to the next day. Let’s hope I have good news about Australia making it though to the Grand Final! I’ll just leave you with this very important advice:

It’s time to pick up where I left off yesterday, heading to the arena for the “preview” show of Semi Final 2. I guess it’s basically a full dress rehearsal, but all the voting stuff at the end is just made up for fun (well, for rehearsal). On the way over we saw a few of those superlambananas.

Joining the queue to enter the arena, there was plenty of security around as always, but this time we also noticed four policemen standing against a nearby wall, all carrying sizeable machine guns.

Once inside this time we headed right for the back of arena, mainly to have something to lean against, but also to see how things looked from here, knowing we’re going the the “real” version of semi final 2 the next night. As luck would have it the first place we picked to stand was also right in front of the ‘green room’ for Australia – although since they were going to be the last act, we knew they wouldn’t be there long if at all.

We found a few aussies, and a few more, and before long we had our own little small but enthusiastic crowd of friends. One thing that was super sweet, one of the women there had (like us I guess) wanted to come for Eurovision for years and years, and this was her first ever show. Once we all met up, said hi, and she settled in and got comfortable. She saw the massive “Eurovision 2023” displayed up on the stage, realised that it finally was very ver real, and promptly had a little (happy) cry about her dream come true. It was quite lovely.

Eventually the show itself got underway, and I won’t go through every act but again there were some standouts.

Romania: Undortunately stood out for the wrong reasons, I guess they must have had a very limited budget as they basically made no use of the stage at all, just a not very exciting video backdrop which did nothing to enhance the song.

Belgium: Great song, elevated by a very strong performance and amazing visuals and stage presence – a real crowd-pleaser.

Albanian: So much more powerful than expected, they did great.

And of course Australia – awesome, because Australia! Not just that, it was great to hear the entire crowd, no matter what country, singing along. Everyone we’ve met so far has said the Australian entry is fantastic. Will this translate into votes when the real semi final is on thought? We can only hope. They did a massive cheer at the end so fingers crossed.

The interval acts did a great job, I’ll probably talk about them more after the ‘real’ second semi final performance.

Then it was on to the fake voting, as this is just a rehearsal show. To make sure the camera crows also had a proper rehearsal, they put some unsuspecting staff members into each of the ‘green room’ areas for the participating companies – who then made a point of completely over-acting whenever the camera was on them, giving their best ‘anxious face’ or their best ‘Hello Europe!’ – it ended up making a potentially pointless part of the show so much fun. And we all cheered them along with their fake reactions to their fake winning 🙂

Another area where this different from the real show, was the perfomances from UK, Spain and Ukraine. As last year’s winning country, Ukraine doesn’t need to compete in a semi-final, nor do the ‘Big 5’ of UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy. While they had a crowd it made sense to record some of these countries’ performances so they have something to broadcast later (and put on YouTube!). So, it was cool to see Spain, UK, and Ukraine perform as well.

Before we know it that was the end of the show. But it wasn’t the end of the night. What do the young people do after Eurovision? Why they go out clubbing of course. What do the old people do after Eurovision? Well this time, to the surprise of many, yep we went out to the ‘EuroClub’, at ‘Camp and Furnace’ in Liverpool, not too far from the arena. The EuroClub is playing host to many Eurovision competitors past and present, and tonight they were hosting Conchita (formerly Conchita Wurst), who won with their sing ‘Rise like a Phoenix’ for Austria back in 2014. She opened her set at the club with a truly amazing acoustic version of the song, just her and her guitarist, it was quite magical and had the previously noisy crowd quite spellbound. I’m so glad we went. She did a few more songs but nothing could top that opening number. We also saw the Azerbaijan boys from ‘TuranTuranX’ as they squeezed past us in the club.

Straight after that though it was very much time to shuffle back home and collapse, well and truly worn out after a huuuge evening. And to think we get to do it all again tomorrow!

To start off, I’ve run out of energy making up those little ‘departure board’ photos at the start of every post. It’s kinda fiddly squishing the letters in to place and, heck, I’m on holiday. So the frame and its hundred of little letter tiles might be another thing on the list of Things I Should Not Have Packed.

Secondly, it’s already past midnight so this is going to a bit short, more tomorrow.

After last nights festivities, today was a bit of a sleep-in day, but still made it downstairs in plenty of time for an easy hotel breakfast. Today’s forecast is for just a 30% change of rain at 1pm. So naturally as soon as we got back to our room after breakfast it started bucketing down. But it’s a good time to count my blessings, at least I am not the guy I can see through the window, using a foot pump to re-inflate one his car tyres in the pouring rain.

The morning was super quiet, did nothing after filling up with breakfast other than a preparatory nap for the afternoon.

Finland (Cha Cha Cha!!) we’re playing at the EuroVillage in the afternoon so we wandered over there to check it out, and ran into a few more Aussies (Hey Tobie!). On the way, near the Albert dock, there was a small platform made out of little stones, that people has taken to with a bit of extra decoration, which was cool, assuming it’s quite temporary.

Arriving at the eurovillage, we saw a slightly deflated “Turan TuranX”, the band from Azerbaijan, who failed to qualify at the semi final last night. Nice of them to still front up and play for us all, and the crowd did give them a rousing welcome.

Next up was a local band Keyside (a eurovision act fell through), but here’s a photo just in case these young kids become famous in future. 🙂

While all this was going on I was having a chat with one the locals who’d come down to see what all the fuss was about, was lovely talking to her, her primary concern was the prices going up for everything, and how terribly unfair it is. I said if she wants to see tourists being ripped off she should come to Sydney :). But it was great to see the locals getting involved rather than just having this rather odd competition just foisted upon them and them shunning it.

We were also accosted (if that’s the word) by this trio of absolutely lovely Dutch people, mad as hatters, but having the best time, they were such good fun.

And being in the village meant I got to take more photos of these beautiful buildings – The Three Graces.

As for the act we came to see, Kaarija from Finland, he certainly didn’t disappoint. Very funny, incredible high energy, and nice to hear some other songs for hi, apart from Cha Cha Cha – for which, of course, the crowd went completely bonkers. I’m still hoping it could win outright.

Next we grabbed a quick Pizza from a pizza truck within the EuroVillage, and then it was time to head off to the next instalment, the “Preview” show for Semi Final 2. But like I said at the top it’s already after midnight so I’ll save that for tomorrow morning. Suffice to say it was an incredible show!

It’s Semi-Final 1 day!

Had a nice slow start to the day, since we know it’s going be a late one.

It was time to tackle the growing pile of laundry, one of those inconvenient things about travel but it must be done. The nearest laundrette was a few km away, without great public transport access we Uber’d ourselves over to Prima Cleaners to it all done. The whole place was app-driven but not even an app could fix the multiple broken machines so we had to wait a bit before we could begin. Eventually got two loads washed and dried, and as a bonus had a great chat with another Australian who is over here for Eurovision as well. Hey Trish! 🙂

That was pretty much the whole morning – watching clothes go around and around.

My hopes for a curry wurst (let’s just call it a delayed longing from frankfurt) we’re dashed when the German food truck didn’t have any – yeah it kinda did end up being the wurst food truck! But I made do with a tasty smoked Frankfurt so I guess it’s only second wurst?

The German food truck was way further away from the laundrette than I thought I was going to be, so slowly shuffled back to hotel for a rest before the next thing on the agenda – meeting up with all the felllow Aussie Eurovision fans at a venue before heading off to the semi final. Not just a venue, ‘The Venue’ – what a helpful name, imagine trying to find that in Google! :). It was a very nice place though.

It was great to meet more of the Aussie contingent and hear stories of Eurovisions past, and rampant speculation about who would and wouldn’t get through tonight’s semifinal. And after a few hours of chatting, it was time for us all to find out.

The venue was only about 2km away but we got an Uber due to the whole walking-is-not-my-friend situation. As always with Uber ‘2 minutes away’ suddenly becomes 15 mins as soon as you press Confirm, but no to worry, our car did turn up.

I’ll preface this next bit with a happy note to say that nobody was injured. Yeah. So maybe 200 metres into our journey, at an intersection, our Uber and another car both tried to pass through it at the same time…. Our car was soundly hit on the front passenger wheel, by another car travelling across the intersection we were travelling down. I wasn’t paying attention to the lights to see what had been going on, the important bit is that nobody was hurt, though discussions got a bit heated between the drivers before everyone took a breath and calmed down. Weirdly, there was nothing we could really do except get out of the car and continue on our way. If they need our version of events Uber has our details. So yeah, just to add a little drama to the day. If anyone had “car accident” on your Holiday Bingo card, congrats! 🙂

So, plan B, we walked down to the venue, grabbed a Fish Finger Butty on the way. There have been all sorts of issues with the ticketing system leading up to the event, but happily ours were working and we were through into the arena with no fuss. On our way we saw Eurovision-famous Mans Zelmerlow, and right next to us in the queue to get in was Survivor-famous George from Cabramatta! So we had a quick chat and didn’t do the “OMG can we get a selfie!!” because we’re far too cool and dignified, or at least pretending to be.

Happily the line moved relatively quickly and we made it into the arena. And wow, it really looked amazing. We found a spot to stand, not too far from the front of the space, just a few rows back, which was nice. Sometimes, enough tall people would get out the way so I’d get a glimpse of what was going on 🙂

We also saw the three remaining member of Bucks Fizz were in the audience (well, in the luxury ‘green room’ section), so it was nice of them to come along, as they won Eurovision for the UK back in 1981 with ‘Making your mind up’.

The opening to the show was kinda emotional – making us all take a moment to remember just why the show cannot be hosted in Ukraine this year. It was heartening to hear the floor manager tell us before the show that any of the camera operators and crew, plus roles in the creative direction of the show and so forth, were being done by Ukrainian people tonight.

Without going through every single performance, there were a few standouts.

Croatia: For just being complete bat-shit crazy. It doesn’t get much more Eurovision than that.

Finland: Slightly less bonkers, and a ridiculously catchy song that the whole crowd went wild for. Kinda hope they end up winning the whole thing. Cha cha cha!! Amusingly, one of the Australian crew looks so much lead the singer (with a brilliantly matching costume) that he interviewed on the BBC as the actual Finland contestant, Käärijä 🙂 https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/bbc-interview-appears-to-confuse-eurovision-fan-with-finnish-entrant-kaarija/ar-AA1aYceP

Sweden: Loreen is almost everyone’s favourite to take out this years comp so of course she had an enormous reaction from the crowd.

Portugal: A much bigger response from the crowd that I was expecting – maybe there were more Portuguese people in the crowd tonight than I would have thought.

Also worthy of a mention is the performance of the stage itself. Last year in Turin, there was a heap of drama and many acts having to do some last minute changes, due to the fact that the video wall couldn’t reset itself quickly enough between acts, so everyone had to make do with just lights and not a video background.

Here, the whole back of the stage was a moving segmented video wall – part of the ceiling could lower itself to meet the floor, and lights could drop down or ride up from just about anywhere, making for an incredibly dynamic presentation area, which many countries enjoyed making use of.

I guess the hardest part to describe is the atmosphere. If you’ve been to a big sporting match, it’s basically the exact same vibe, just with more teams playing the game at once. Everyone has their favourite, the whole room is buzzing with energy, the happiness was contagious particularly any time Finland and their Cha Cha Cha song was mentioned anywhere at all. There was certainly a lot of love in the room. A little more cool air would have been welcomed – though happily we weren’t all completely jammed in like a mosh pit, there was still room to move.

Two very different interval acts follow, a beautiful and haunting rendition of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”, and later Rita Ora, performing a joyful medley or her hits, with what felt like 1000 backup dancers. Ok maybe 20, but it was still an impressive display the way they all worked together seamlessly.

The hosts for the evening did a great job, without quite as much of the usual Eurovision Host Cheesiness ones comes to except – but they still have a chance for that with two more shows to come.

After the voting was done, the deliberately slow process of reading out the successful countries began, and it was fun to see this whole ‘goes like clockwork’ event interrupted by a crowd who would not stop changing “Cha Cha Cha!!”, or calling out Norway in the hope they would be announced as a qualifier (Spoiler alert: they were).

I could probably go on, but it’s midnight, so time to bring this to a close. It was brilliant, and an absolute thrill to be a part of. The start of a long-held wish finally coming true, and you’ve got to be happy with that.

The day’s off to good start – woke up feeling at least 90% less shit than yesterday so let’s call that a huge win!

We started the day with breakfast in the hotel, had to go the ‘full English’ option of course, which was pretty darn tasty.

Afterwards we caught a bus from the hotel up to Liverpool One, a bit open air mall, kinda like Pitt St Mall but on steroids. It had some very important shops though – an Apple shop, and a Eurovision merch shop. We had to mark this pretty momentous occasion by getting a pretty momentous souvenir – a Kosta Boda mini replica of the Eurovision trophy. It’s really nice, and they only made 300 of them, so very glad we were able to get our hands on one.

At Liverpool One there was also a huge Liverpool Football Club merch shop which is understandable. And more or less next door, rival club Everton also has a shop. Remember we’re at a place called Liverpool One, so it’s kinda brilliant that they’ve called their shop:

We wandered back to the docks past a few more installations that the city has put on dune to Eurovision, including one of Ukrainian Songbirds which are dotted around town.

At the dock (one of them, I don’t remember, there’s a few to choose from!) we hopped on a hop-on-hop-off bus, which ended up being a personalised tour because it was just the two of us, the driver and the guide on board. He was a funny guy, knew a lot about the town too. The only downside is that I was too busy talking to him to take photos of all the things he was talking about, like the registry office where John and Cynthia Lennon were married, some hotels owned by or named in honour of some talented footballers, and a bunch of Liverpool’s biggest/mostest/first-est things. One I didn’t know – Liverpool’s Chinatown, while not huge itself, does have the largest gateway anywhere outside of mainland China. INstead of a photo here’s something I grabbed from google street view.

After the quick tour we tackled another important tourist item – the Ferris wheel, giving us a bit of a look over and above what you might normally see from the ground. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

We wandered back toward the hotel (pictured below) but this amusing taken-out-of-context sign also got my attention

There was a short detour past ‘Camp & Furnace’ the venue where ‘Euroclub’ is being held this year, to get our wristbands for entry during the week. Back at the hotel it was time for preparatory nap for the evening ahead.

When you’re here on the ground, Eurovision isn’t just 2 semi finals and final. There’s a whole microcosm of things going on, both official an unofficial, dotted all over the town. There are three main centres of activity – the arena for the actual shows, The Euroclub (i.e. Camp & Furnace), and lastly, the EuroVillage, a massive area reserved for everyone to enjoy free of charge, where bands are performing, food trucks are plentiful, and security is everywhere. Which can only be seen as a good thing when you’re hosting a big public event on behalf of Ukraine. Sydney friends, it would kinda like if they shut off most of Circular Quay for an event, that’s kinda how it felt. As we made our way there it was nice to see some more sights including a few of the Superlambananas which are there because, um, reasons? Not a Eurovision thing, these sculptures all decorated by different artists have been around for a fair while. It was also a delight to get up a bit closer to the Royal Liver Building, one of the ‘three graces’ that make for a beautiful skyline.

Today at the EuroVillage was a day to focus on Ukraine – not just its plight, but its history, culture, and most of all its music. We got there in time to see the band ‘Go_A’ who had an awesome song, ‘Shum’ in the 2021 Eurovision which placed 5th. I became on of those annoying people who holds their phone up for the whole show instead of just being present and enjoying the moment – but still really enjoyed the moment nonetheless. The crowd were really into it even though judging my video they look a bit on the calm side. They played a whole bunch of songs which was lovely to see. What was also lovely’s was the number of people who responded when the lead singers asked if there were any Ukranians in the crowd. A few songs may not solve the problems of the world, but it gives at least a moment of solidarity in some truly awful times.

When Go_A did indeed Go Away, after playing a bunch of great tunes, it was time to grab a bite to eat (shout-out to Smokehouse, the hardest working food truck I’ve ever seen)

Next up on stage we TVORCHI – this year’s Eurovision act from Ukraine. They were here for a good time not a long time, and of course played their song for this year’s contest, Heart of Steel.

By this time (around 9:30) it was starting to get dark, so a good enough reason for one more shot of the Royal Liver building, lit up in Ukraine flag colours.

Despite being about 9:30pm that’s only the start of festivities for the hardcore Eurovision crowd. There was plenty more still to come at Camp & Furnace — but, after a lot of walking already and lot of standing watching the bands perform, I knew I wouldn’t make the 2km walk to the venue so I shuffled back to the hotel while Perry went on ahead. Bit of a shame i couldn’t make it but, gotta accept your limitations. And I’d rather miss that than miss the grand final, that one’s non-negotiable! 🙂

More fun tomorrow, stay tuned! 🙂

Ahhh. *rubs eyes and yawns* . Ten hours sleep was grand, feeling a bit feverish and waking up with a pounding headache, less so. But thanks to the magic of Panadol and caffeine I’m at least ready to drag myself out the door. Could do with a nap though.

We left our nice little room at “Hotel The Exchange”, trundled up the road to Amsterdam Centraal, and (once we actually found a ticket machine) was very happy with how easy (and relatively cheap!) it is to get a ticket for an airport train.

Sixteen minutes and one stop later, hello Schipol airport! Just managed to scrape in under the 23kg bag limit for this flight (by a whole 200g lol) so that was nice. We did the usual airport stuff, and even though I didn’t plan it this way I even had the opportunity to be felt up, er, patted down I mean, by a very easy-on-the-eye security guard 😂

After all that it was bit of hurry-up-and-wait for our KLM flight to Manchester. Good time for a nap.

To board, there was a surprisingly long bus ride to the plane, I was starting to wonder if the bus would head for the channel tunnel and drive us all the way to Manchester but no, we got to our plane and climbed up the steps (I know! Steps!), giving our farewells to Amsterdam.

The flight was just over an hour, smooth, pleasant, and good time for a nap.

We worked our way through Manchester airport, which has a train station, which I thought would make things easy. I swear it was a half hour walk for slow old me, I felt deceived!

But eventually we made it and got on the train. Only a short trip, but a good time for, you guessed it, a nap.

First leg of our trip to Liverpool was great – then we got to Manchester Oxford road to find our connecting train was cancelled. Where is Deutsche Bahn when you need them! But full credit to everyone at the station, they rounded us all up and put us on a different train straight away. I get the feeling that they really are trying to to put their best face forward for the massive influx of crazy Eurovision fans that are turning up from all over the place. As a bonus this train was an express straight to Liverpool Lime street. Good time for… a nap? Why yes, yes it is. Except for a screaming baby that didn’t let up for the whole 50 minutes. I was still not feeling great, all tired and grumpy and very much lacking my usual “Ah well, babies are just gonna baby” attitude.

Liverpool Lime Street was full of Eurovision fans all trying to work out where they had to be and what they had todo. (un)Helpfully, a number of streets nearby were blocked off including the Taxi rank, which was super useful when there weren’t any signs. Still, a blocked off road doth carry no taxis, so I found an unblocked road, and shortly after, were in a cab to our destination. I kinda feared the worst, the taxi driver’s card machine just happened to be ‘broken’ so he could only take cash, and he didn’t set the meter, I figured he knew an easy tourist target when he saw one. But I kept an eye on my map on my phone and he did take the most direct route, and it was £16 – about a pound a minute, but honestly I was expecting him to charge a lot more. Still, whatever it was, there was no way I could have walked it, so all worth it.

The hotel is a little bit out of the way, but from a Eurovision point of view is well positioned between the Arena and the big Eurovision party zone. I was less than thrilled to find that we were on the 2nd floor (ie the 3rd floor) and there’s no lift, but eventually made it. At least the room was bigger than I was expecting, so that’s nice considering it’s home for the next 7 days. I was, of course, ready for a nap by this point, but managed to resist.

We had a bit of a wander along the Liverpool dockside, it was great to get my first glimpse of the famous Liver (rhymes with MacGyver) birds, but ultimateIy I couldn’t make it all the way to the ‘EuroVillage’ so I left Perry to check it out why I slowly shuffled myself back to the hotel. Along the way there was a lot going on, lots of food trucks, a sauna truck (yes really, every bit as odd as it sounds), a merry-go-round, and stacks of people having a pretty good time. The weather was really nice despite the forecasts of rain, so that was another bonus. It’s also nice to see the city really getting into it with the signage and the like.

Dinner was an easy trip downstairs to the hotel’s own restaurant – didn’t even know it had one! We both had bangers and mash, so I guess at least we did get into some of the local cuisine on day one this time :). And then over the road to Maccas for a cheeky Sundae, except, shock horror they don’t do Sundaes! A McFlurry had to suffice. Hopefully that sugar hit will keep going long enough to finish writing up the days events before falling into bed, where the plan is then to wake up fully refreshed and feeling 100% better because as Lizzo says, it’s about damn time!