Those who know me well, know that I am a music fanatic.  I like all kinds of music, but I don’t often attend concerts, mainly because I don’t like crowds or traffic jams.  I did make an exception for Sting, though.  In November of last year, when I was feeling especially blue and a bit weakened by depression, I decided to buy a couple of ticket’s to last night’s Sting concert which took place at the Porsche Arena in Stuttgart.

I paid a bundle for the tickets because I was a bit late to the game.  The only ones available were from “fan to fan” sales, which meant the price was a bit jacked up.  However, we did have great seats.  We were in row six, seats ten and eleven.  In fact, I was very surprised by how intimate the venue was.  I was expecting an enormous arena, but it wasn’t that big at all.  They didn’t even have those huge television monitors you often see at big name acts.  I will write more about last night’s excellent show in a later post.  It deserves its own commentary.  Suffice to say that Sting is still going strong at 65!  If I hadn’t been listening to him since the early 80s, I would think he was at least 20 years younger than he is.

Last summer, Bill and I saw Van Morrison play during the annual jazz open festival.  Because we live rather far from Stuttgart and traffic here is legendarily horrible, we decided to stay in a hotel downtown.  We had such a good experience at the Wald Hotel in Degerloch last July, we decided to stay there again for the Sting concert.  I booked us for two nights in a superior room.  Bill wanted to try the hotel’s restaurant, Finch, which we knew we wouldn’t have a chance to try on the night of the show.  Yes, it’s a hotel restaurant, but it has an interesting (and expensive) menu.  We made a 7:30 reservation for our first night at the hotel.

Our dogs, Zane and Arran, have spent two days hanging out with Max at Dog Holiday and will be coming home later today.  I’ve had the chance to earn my keep by doing some basic housekeeping.  Now I’m ready to write.

Stuttgart is not a bad city to visit… even if you’re kind of a local.