Another Euro Summer Pt. 1

I started this Euro trip with a couple days to myself in Amsterdam. I landed in the morning off an overnight flight and made my way to the hotel. I spent the day wandering the city, napping off jet-lag and seeing a bit of Beck that night. The next day was much the same only RadioheadWesterpark in the afternoon to visit some friends on the crew and see the show. It was stellar per usual. The new, all-LED light show was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Of course it sounded brilliant and it was great to hear the new stuff. The next day, after my third pancake of the trip, I hopped a train to Paris where I met up with team Dandys. From there we were picked up by the tour bus and were off to Bilbao, Spain for the first show of the tour.
I woke up and stumbled off the bus in Bilbao to find a field of horses overlooking the whole city. You could even see the Guggenheim (which we didn’t have time to visit) shining down in the distant valley. The festival site was great, all hilly and green. Things ran a bit…Spanish as far as the show went but it was a fun day nonetheless.

Bilbao & the horses...
The next day was another, smaller festival in Cluses, France. We pulled into town (after a LONG journey during which the bus AC was broken.  This always happens somehow.  We took to holding bent pieces of cardboard out the hatch in the roof, angling the fresh air into the bus) to find out the festival was in the middle of this little town nestled in the French Alps. There were towering peaks in all directions and it seemed everyone in the little town turned out for this free festival.
Of course catering was filled with glorious, stinky cheeses, fresh bread & salads. We closed out the show just as it started to rain, which only added to the surreal feel of the day, and were off to Zurich.

After a non-eventful day & club show in Zurich, we headed to Italy. The whole purpose of our trip to Italy was to spend some time with Galo, a friend of the band's and great artist, who has a country mansion built by one of Napoleon's generals outside of Torino. We arrived at our hotel around noon on Monday. It was a family run place on their farm in the Piedmont countryside.
It looked like this...
I'm pretty sure we were the only one's staying there. For meals we'd sit out on the terrace with this view...
...and eat some of whatever they made that day. It was always fresh, delicious and simple. Octopus carpaccio, caprese salad, tagliatelle w/ricotta, lasagna. Oh, and the theme of this part our trip was 'rivers of wine'. Now, I'm not a huge wine person, but it's hard to deny how good this wine was.

So, after showering up we piled into a mini-bus organized by Galo with our whole group (minus Lee), Galo, his girlfriend Sasha and Chas & Tina (Chas is another artist who works with Galo and Tina is his wife. He's English & she's Croatian. They live in Amsterdam. They are awesome). We took a 30 minute drive through the vineyards, sunflower fields and farms into a little village for lunch.
Another beautiful patio, a really nice couple who run the place and absolutely ridiculously good food (and the aforementioned rivers of wine).

Later we meandered around the village taking pictures and digesting before heading back to the hotel for a nap before Galo's party.

Fathead & Sara...

Dylan getting his shot...
People who like wine...
Matilda...
How quintessential Italian is this?
Multiple angles...Galo's house is about a mile down a country road from the hotel. As I said it's an old country mansion with gorgeous, walled in grounds and is just about the most bucolic setting you can imagine. I showed up at dusk to find tables & chairs scattered on the lawn with people gathering around the food table which had a progression of goodness churned out of the giant kitchen by some catering friends of Galo's, including this cheese that had a rind made out of the grape stuff left over from making wine. It looked absolutely disgusting but was quite possibly the best cheese in history. So we stayed there until 6am, eating, drinking and getting rocked by Zia's DJ prowess. We walked home along the dirt road and I fell into bed for a few hours before getting on the bus to go to the gig. It was definitely one of the best days/nights ever. Wish you were there.

The general who had it built...
The gig was in Cuneo, which is about as big as you'd think. It was a wall-less tin-shed with all the accoutrements you'd expect from a rural Italian gig. Italy, like Spain, is one of those places better left to time off than to working. The highlight of the day was the pizza from the concession stand (which they fed us for dinner). It was made in a wood-fired brick oven by a greasy, round man from Naples who was apparently trained by the world's best pizza master (or whatever). Regardless, it was the best pizza I've ever had and it was the concession food at a shitty venue. This says a great deal about the difference between American & European culture (or at least SOME European cultures). Everyone was so spent from the night before that there was no aftershow that night. Just sweet sleep with no checkout the next morning.

The Dandys rock Cuneo...

The next day everyone except me & "the family" (Travis, Zia & their daughter Tildy) went into Torino with Galo & crew for a day in the city. I opted for a lazy day in the country and was glad I did. Lots of time relaxing on the balcony and 2 great meals on the terrace, between which I took Tilde for a walk through the farm fields to look at ponies. Now, Tilde is 3 and a half. I've never had a kid on tour before and it definitely adds a whole other dynamic into the mix. Luckily she's about as sweet & well-behaved a kid as you could want and it's actually been really fun having her around. She's at an age where pretty much everything that she says is either hilarious or cute enough to break your heart. She was pretty disappointed that the ponies we saw didn't talk like her 'Pretty Ponies' toys, and she really thought that they liked her enough that they'd let her ride them. Still, we had fun.

We got on the bus at 1am to head towards Ostrava in the Czech Republic, leaving behind the Italian goodness...