After a very little sleep, partly due to an uncomfortable hotel bed and partly due to nerves and excitement, the day of the flight to Italy had finally arrived. There was no time for breakfast as we needed to be on the train to the airport as breakfast was starting to be served in the hotel.
Our journey to the train and then on to the airport went very smoothly. All sorts of worries had been running through my head like being delayed in the London morning traffic or the train being delayed. You name it and I was worrying about it! Thankfully none of the things I was concerned about actually happened.
We haven’t been abroad in over 10 years and checking in and security procedures have completely changed in that time, so that too was a worry but again all seemed pretty straight forward in the end.
At this point I thought we're at the airport, we're checked in , we're through security, we've got though everything that could present a problem and finally we could actually relax a little and possibly even have time to grab something to eat. I thought we’d got plenty of time and I hadn’t realised that there was a much earlier time on the boarding pass for when we needed to be ready to board.
Suddenly I had a phone call from British Airways to ask where we were as we had 5 minutes to get to the gate as there was a bus to take us to the plane. Our names then were read out over the tannoy and panic set in again. I couldn’t have come this far and then miss the flight!!!
Thankfully we made it with a minute to spare and were soon on the plane!! My partner is not a great flyer and we then had over 30 minutes of the plane taxiing along the runway until we took off which stressed him out. However the flight itself was fine and we soon arrived in Italy.
We met up with our friends Derek and Diego, who had hired a car to drive us to Salsmaggiore Terma. I’d never been to Italy before and was hoping to see some nice scenery as we travelled but sadly there was a mist so we couldn’t see very much at all.
Within a couple of hours we’d arrived at our destination. We checked into the hotel which went surprising well as we don’t speak any Italian and the receptionist didn’t speak very much English!
The plan had been had been to quickly leave our things at the hotel and then meet up with our friends again to try and get to the press conference the cast were having so our Fame adventure could begin. Sadly our friends got a little lost on the way to their hotel. Even though it was only a few minutes away the Sat Nav took them off in a completely wrong direction. Plus there were issues with phones and internet access so sadly we missed the actual press conference.
While we were waiting to contact out friends again we decided to explore Salsomaggiore a little. The town was very quiet and pretty small. It felt pretty much deserted, I think the locals were probably having a Siesta. The only other people we saw were 2 sets of other British people also there for the concert, one of which was our other friends Brian and Ant who were staying in the same hotel as us.
One thing that I really caught my eye were the big posters that were positioned around the town advertising the Fame concert. They certainly made the excitement mount. I was getting feeling happy and relaxed and expecting this was going to be one fun weekend. Little did I know just what a Fame rollercoaster I was about to get on to!!
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