10 months and 7 days (October 17, 2021). That is how long it has been since I booked the tickets. THEY announced a concert in Valencia, Spain for June 25, 2022 – when we would be in Spain! I had already planned a month in Spain driving west to east and had secured points plane tickets home from Lisbon along with booked 75% of our hotels already. Holy cow! Fast, re-do the whole trip and all my hotel points bookings along with plane tickets now home from Barcelona, so we could be in Valencia that night! Booked the concert tickets (which was another adventure using Google Translate to Spanish to get accessible tickets and proving that I had a disability). Don’t tell Andrew! THEN I found out that we were to see them in Seattle – forgot with all that happened to me in the fall of 2020, that I had tickets to a show that was postponed to November, 2021. Which was AMAZING and unfortunate as 4 weeks later, one of the singers, who is very popular with the women, a Spanish singer and bass of the group, passed away suddenly from COVID. I did not care at that time about the tickets – probably the concert in Valencia would be cancelled – it was the ONLY concert in Spain at that time. Our trip was good to go! Still did not tell Andrew though – he was so good to come with me to Seattle (as we had to fly due to COVID rules not allowing us to drive) that why bother him about another concert that probably would be cancelled? I was very careful when making my travel book (which Andrew has access to) – it has all our reservations, tickets, insurance etc. to NOT put the concert tickets in there – however it seemed the concert was going ahead! We left as you know in April – I had not heard anything to the contrary about the concert and I noticed that there were a couple more concerts booked in Europe now and that this was now an “In Memory” concert. I did not really focus on the concert until we were in Granada and we were walking down the street and Andrew said to me “look who is in concert on July 1st!” Oh my stomach sunk. He knows THEY are in Spain! I played cool and said something like – “too bad we will not be here.” We drove to Valencia – arrived at the hotel in good time and decided to go for dinner. While at dinner (it was 9pm) all of a sudden a high volume of distant screaming and roaring happened and it was obvious there was a concert going on nearby. AGAIN I tried to play it cool. I knew we were staying at the AC Marriott Hotel a block from where the concert was going to happen. I had purposely got us “lost” getting to dinner to miss the concert venue but I did not put two and two together that it was an open air venue! OOPS! We are in a hot climate! So on our walk back to the hotel I FORGOT to go the “wrong” way and we walked past the “Plaza de Toros de Valencia” (Valencia Bull Ring) on our way back to the hotel. Got back to our room and about 5 minutes later Andrew said “Did you know that Il Divo is going to be in town tomorrow night?”. There it was – secret was out of the bag! He had looked up who was singing in the Valencia Bull Ring that night (a young Latin singer thus the screaming) and then he saw Il Divo on the list for the next night. So what was I to say?
Here they are! IL DIVO in concert! The accessible seating was on the floor of the Bull Ring – there were only 4 of us with our “other person” and we were seated at the end of Row 12. It was AMAZING to be so close to the stage! We got there at 8pm when the doors were supposed to open (which happened actually at 8:45pm Spanish Time). To walk the route into the ring that the bulls take and to feel the fine dirt between my toes (I was wearing sandals) was bizarre! Pushing my walker was a bit hard – it was like being on soft, baby powder like sand which was on a hard surface somewhere underneath. We had beverages while we waited and it got darker…. At 9:30pm a pre-concert group played, which was interesting as they were singing in English with a Spanish accent! At 10:10pm the show started… yes there are 4 of them – they have an invited guest named Steven LaBrie, who has been signing with them for the last couple of months who does the baritone singing that Carlos used to fill. You almost cannot tell the difference. ALMOST.
Here are some of the videos that I took –
1. Spanish – Titanic Movie – Will Go On
2. English – Somewhere (Encore Number)
3. English – Time to Say Goodbye (Encore Number 2)
4. Spanish/English – Smile
5. English – Motown – My Girl
6. Spanish – Bodyguard Movie – I Will Always Love You
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4nc14dseniygxn/20220625_235241.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wfhth6gpefuhpp8/20220625_235841.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3t3a37qubkcwvq2/20220626_000641.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tzqxg9omciwubc/20220625_231613.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhtu0k71zf93ibc/20220625_232736.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jbkomapofull6kb/20220625_234355.mp4?dl=0