Dolder Delight
The delightful Dolder Grand Hotel was every bit as pristine as we remembered from our brief visit nearly two years ago at the tail end on the first ‘Bob encounter’. We now recall with more fondness the quirkiness of the in-room electronics. Once you get used to the fact there are no light switches in obvious places and that the TV is the ‘brain’ of the system, it’s fine. It will teach me to think twice about yanking the cables out of the back of the television when I can’t switch it off easily.
As I mentioned yesterday, it’s Laurie’s birthday today and since the weather is spectacular and the venue is merely a short walk from the hotel, we decided to relax at the nearby outdoor public Lido, right net to the venue. Laurie is visiting me in Zurich for a few days with our youngest son Leon and his cousins from the US, Scott and Melissa. Scott is a keen photographer and I took a break with my camera today and decided to let someone who knows what they’re doing take over. Ironically, he uses a Canon 6D too.
The pool was lovely and a few of the crew managed to get a sneaky dip after load in whilst Glenn and TC popped over to the small driving range across the road and hit a few balls. The Live at Sunset festival is set in the most glorious surroundings, high in the hills of District 7, overlooking Zurich and the Zürichsee. It is a well established Swiss event that is extremely well organized. Because of the setup, there was no need for our caterers to work today with all the food being supplied in conjunction with the hotel. It was nice but we missed the culinary genius of Chris, Dave and George.
The show was another winner. The packed, seated crowd were fantastic and the atmosphere in the small converted Ice Hockey rink arena was electric. The forecast thunderstorms stayed well to the South and were tracked all day by John, the production manager on a small laptop behind the stage. Because the weather has decided to finally play ball this Summer and it is now officially ‘hot, storms can obviously spring up anywhere. So far we’ve dodged them all.
The set was fabulous and the band were brimming with energy, in particular, Ianto who had a fantastic night. One of the toughest things to deal with on the road is when you’re under the weather and Ian has been running at 90% the past few days although you’d never have known as like all of us, you just get your head down and get on with it. This is I suppose one of the reasons we spend so much time in hotel gyms and consider carefully our diets…most of the time!
pic Scott Domeyer
I love this pic, with the little girl watching Dave at work..
pic Scott Domeyer
After show we hung a little at the venue and slowly wandered back to the hotel. A cuppa on the balcony on a moonlit night overlooking Lake Zurich and the day was done.
