Back from the USA

We finished our tour to Los Angeles on the 31st of July. I spend one more day in London before coming home to Bray around 11pm and going straight back to work the next morning.
The tour went very well. Our audiences loved our show and we loved our audiences.
I enjoy working with Josh. He is such a talented musician who always keeps his accompaniment fresh and surprising. He seems to become a different kind of person once he starts playing.
The tour was pretty manic, with two shows a day and a lot of driving involved. I travelled from downtown to the Hollywood Hills every day to pick up Josh and then south to Orange County most of the days. Two shows were in Duarte and Burbank and some in North Hollywood.So,yes, we did get around quite a bit.
I was amazed by the quality of the senior apartments we performed in. Large but low rise buildings with a central club room where the activities happened from painting to writing to exercises to singing classes. Most of the Complexes had a swimming pool, where they offered aqua aerobics to interested residents. Much to our joy, some apartment complexes had their own piano. It saved us taking our keyboard out of the car which was quite heavy.
The Burbank Senior Artist Colony even has its own theatre, radioprogramme, studios and gallery. Despite our audiences diverse ethnic backgrounds there where always some connections to either Germany, Ireland or France.
One Spanish Lady in Casa Bonita, also spoke German (but no English) because she had lived in Bremen for 15 years, a town in northern Germany which is near where I originate from.
A resident in Cantabria, originally from Sri Lanka, knew most of the German songs in our programme because he had learned the language in his country.
All the staff we got to meet were very caring, joyful and accommodating. It was a pleasure to work with them all.
We didn't have a GPS in our car much to Josh's dismay, but I think the A/C was much more important, considering that we are not really used to the heat over there.
Josh's usually very good navigation skills were put to the test in LA but I have to say that I much prefer him telling me where to go then to listen to the annoying voice from the SAT NAV.(re-calculating route, when I miss a turn yet again)
All in all it was a very enjoyable and certainly adventurous trip despite some unavoidable moments of tensions and I most definitely enjoyed our performances and working with a gifted musician like Josh.