Life and Times in SoCal

Its been a great summer, very busy in lots of enjoyable ways. We had visitors from mid May and the last won’t leave us until the end of October, with only small gaps between each set of visitors, some even crossed while they were here! We also completed our Summer of Music. we have been to 6 gigs through the year.

It all started and ended in Las Vegas, well no great summer of music stated in Wakefield!  Haha, just kidding, Wakefield is becoming the merry city once again and that’s great to see. there is a lot of regeneration happening in and around Wakefield which should mean a lot for the inhabitants in regards to jobs etc. Also after our last visit to Vegas, Wakefield should challenge to have the UK’s Sphere there rather than London. More on that later in the blog.

Back to the Summer of Music. 

The first gig was Sting in Las Vegas, in the Colosseum in Caesars Palace. We stayed at the Venetian Resort it was also for Julie’s birthday weekend. This was the “My Songs Tour” that Sting is taking around the world, If you get chance go and see it you, won’t be disappointed. 

The next one was Ringo Starr and his All Star Band in mid May at the Pechanga Resort Casino, just down the road from us in Temecula. We then had some time off while we entertained various visitors before it was time to start again in early August. 

This time it was Maroon 5 at the Park MGM in Las Vegas.This was a great concert. Again if you ever get a chance these are a great group live. Adam Levine really knows how to hold an audience. 

At the end of August we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Boy George and Culture Club. Included in the band was Morrissey from the 1980’s band The Smiths. he was also accompanied by Lulu. Boy George was very good singing all his classic hits with a couple of Rolling Stones and George Michael numbers thrown in. Also The Hollywood Bowl is a great venue.

The next was in late September we were in San Diego to see ColdPlay on their Music of the Spheres World Tour. As usual ColdPlay pulled out all the stops. The show as amazing. All the usual stadium busting fan favorites to seldom heard live numbers (in our experience) of Yellow, and Clocks. 

Finally we ended back in Las Vegas for the show I had been looking forward to all summer. Not just for the band but the venue. We went to the 6th show of U2’s Achtung - Baby at Sphere in Las Vegas. U2 are a great band but this was all about the venue. I managed to get tickets for the floor section around 30ft from the stage and we were immersed in what can only be described as currently the best venue in the world. Basically you are inside a sphere where all around you is a screen, not just in front of you but above you and behind you and I don’t mean your typical concert screen, this one is 16k clarity. Thats 4 times most HD TV’s and the internal screen covers 160,000 square feet. Just one screen, no joins or edges (except the one on the guitar) just a great big screen! That is the size of 4 American football fields. It is the largest sphere on the planet. The experience is truly immense. People can get motion sickness from looking at the screen, amazing as you actually never move! 

This is going to be the venue for big acts like ColdPlay, Taylor Swift, The Rolling Stones. acts that have a great show as well as the fantastic music. Speaking of music the sphere has a sound system with 163,000 speakers the sound is crystal clear in every seat. And the outside is just as impressive - Yeah, I loved it!!!

The visitors started with Carys in June and Jordan and family at the end of June to Abbie and family in August and Nicola & Bill in September and finishing with Ian and family in October. How we fit it all in with work and general life is amazing. Sometimes it feels like we are running a hotel, but we get a great kick out of it all.

Its also very interesting to see how each group differs with their expectations and what they want to do when they are here. Some want to do nothing, just chill, some want to do things for their kids and others want to do Vegas!! We tried to talk Nicola and Bill to get married by Elvis in Vegas, but they resisted!

Nicola and Bill had an itinerary for their stay and at first glance it looked like “Good Luck with That” but they had planned it and did everything on their list, using trains, subways, buses and Uber. For a part of the world that says it has no public transport infrastructure, they proved us and them wrong, well done you two!

Abbie, Brock, Pip and Otto visited in late August and it didn’t start off as well as it could. Pip wasn’t very well before they left the UK so they had to delay the start by 2 days but they got here in the end and both Julie and I learned a lot about trains from Pip!

Jordan, Steph, Koby and Milo were here from the very end of June through mid July. Jordan had always wanted to be here for America’s birthday. We had a 4th July party with work colleagues, and neighbors. Jordan was lucky enough to win $80+ on a dice game, probably the first an Englishman won anything from a American since 1776!!

Before that Carys was here, this is her 2nd visit to our place in Corona. The highlight for me during Carys’ visit was Whale watching. There are 100’s of things to do in SoCal but whale watching is, in my opinion, the best. We were lucky enough to see Fin whales, common dolphin and bottle nose dolphin during our 2 hour safari. 

Before that my brother Chris and his wife Wendy were with us with their friend Lisa on their way back from Hawaii only for a few days but as always it was great to see them.

We will be back in the UK in the last half of November, Julie for 2 weeks me for just 1. We try get back twice per year, it always seems like we make the trip at the cold times in the UK it would be great to be back for summer. Its a bind flying in and out of LAX and Heathrow. the traffic and distance makes the trip more stressful. Next summer Virgin start to fly from Las Vegas to Manchester, so may give that a try. 

This will also be the first year in 13 that we have missed Thanksgiving. We will be traveling on November 23rd so hopefully we may get a Turkey dinner on the flight back. 

Abbie, Brock and the boys are looking to come out at Christmas. hopefully we can do this. It will be great fun. It means Santa can come to our house this year!

I have tried to put some video’s on the video section of the website of the U2 and ColdPlay concerts hope fully it works and you can enjoy.

Thanks for reading chat again soon

Paul & Julie

October 2023.