This time two weeks ago myself and Izzy were at the Twenty One Pilots gig at the Alexandra Palace in London and how crazy that night was!
We decided to go to the London Euston train station so that meant we had to get into Birmingham to get the train down. We got into London Euston early afternoon, checked in our hotel and then we headed off to the venue mid afternoon.
We decided to get the tube to Finsbury Park and then get the W3 bus from there to the venue, easy enough right? Oh no not for Izzy and I!
After the tube we found the bus stop and as we were getting on the bus with the change in our hand the bus driver told Izzy and myself that they don't actually accept 'real' money only Oyster cards, travel cards or contact less payment. What kind of bus doesn't accept money? Anyway I used my contact less card but of course Izzy's card isn't contcatless and I wasn't allowed to pay for Izzy's on my card for some reason. Of course we don't have Oyster cards and we didn't think we could use the travelcard on buses otherwise we would have bought one instead of the return tube ticket. The people behind us, obviously Londoners, decided to carry on past us making it obvious we are not from London, so after a couple of minutes the driver just let Izzy on.
~
Can I just take a moment and say just how amazing Josh and Tyler were that night. Their performance was incredible! Even though neither of us could see all that much being short and all, we still loved it.
So the concert finished at 11pm which was expected and as we were walking out the venue, we saw a W3 bus just setting off from it but we didn't care because we could just get the next one in 10 minutes right?... ha NOPE.
Once we got down to the bus stop the queue was hideously long but that's fine we haven't really got a time to get back to the hotel other than the fact that we were waking up at 4:45am to get the 6:20 train out of London so I could get to work on time for my 9-6 shift the next day! No biggy.
Can you see the way this story is going yet?
We just waited for the next one and realised we probably wouldn't actually get on it.
The W3 bus after that, which we would have gotten on, was out of service and did a U turn at our stop and went the other way, baring in mind we had seen about half a dozen W3 buses go in that direction, it was just disheartening.
The next W3 bus at about 11:45pm was too full but stopped anyway so we all ran towards the bus, like everyone else, to try and get on. There was no where near enough room for us.
~
The last tube was about 11:48pm and so we had missed the last tube so we planned a different route back to the hotel. We decided once we got to Finsbury Park we would catch the last 253 bus to London Euston at 00:31am.
~
Finally, the next W3 bus came at 00:05am giving us 25 minuets to catch our last bus in extremely slow moving traffic when in normal traffic it took 20 minutes.
Anyway we got to Finsbury Park by some miracle at 00:25am giving us 6 minuets to try and find the bus stop so we quickly found the bus stop map and then legged it to our stop just in time at 00:30am. However it was 00:40am and our bus still hadn't arrived. I found that there was a N253 bus which seemed to only have one time of 00:48am so we hoped this time our bus would turn up.
It was 00:48am and our bus actually turned up! We finally made it to our hotel at 1:30am and I made it to bed just after 2am.
~
That night I probably got a good half hour nap after being buzzed from the concert and stressed about the alarms going off and the train being cancelled.
Anyway we did make it on our train on time and I just about got into work but oh God was it stressful!
Can I just give a shout out to my best pal coffee right now for helping me through that long long day at work.
TOP was definitely a night I will remember. They do put on a amazing gig, I am totally going to go to another concert of theirs. Bry, their support act, was also brilliant and recommend you give him and Twenty One Pilots a listen if you haven't already.
Georgie
xx
