tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727Sat, 10 Oct 2026 09:10:20 +0000Adventures in travel, pop culture, and whatever else happens to interest one broad, who is often abroad.http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Sarah)Blogger229125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-781086789463394843Mon, 21 Sep 2026 20:49:26 +00002026-09-21T13:49:26.453-07:00As I've mentioned before, I've been a fan of Brandi Carlile for 23-ish years, since the days of just local Seattle fame. But now her hometown shows are at the Gorge (nope, hate it, never gonna go), unless we're lucky enough for a special fan gig (which are rare), so I have to travel to see her live. When the Human Tour was announced, the trip that worked for me was the last date in San Francisco,http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2026/09/brandi-carliles-human-tour-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Vancouver, BC, Canada49.2827291 -123.120737521.988594618300112 -158.2769875 76.576863581699882 -87.964487500000018tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-8563584035852807365Sun, 13 Sep 2026 21:20:30 +00002026-09-13T14:20:30.267-07:00I've been neglecting this place for the last while, partly because I haven't really gone anywhere or done anything interesting, but also because my writing time has all been going into long academic papers, for both graduate and undergraduate classes. Now that those are wrapping up, I'm back... sort of. Realistically, I'll probably spend more time on the newsletter I'm starting, but more on that http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2026/09/back-to-school.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-2411512810931452783Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:20:00 +00002026-05-09T14:57:10.064-07:00If it seems like all I ever do is go to London and/or see Robbie Williams live... welp... it's not not true...When Robbie's latest album, Britpop, came out, he described it as the album he wanted to do right after his ouster from Take That, or what his first album would've sounded like if he knew then what he knows now. And that eventually inspired him to do a tiny show at Dingwalls in http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2026/02/robbies-long-90s-in-london.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0London, UK51.5072178 -0.1275862-13.397653414553893 -140.7525862 90 140.4974138tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-9152291860932384221Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:31:00 +00002025-12-31T12:45:00.978-08:00Look, no matter what's going on in the world, I wouldn't be a proper blogger hack if I didn't publish my favourite media of the year at the end of December. So here you go, the top fives of 2025... Books  (That I read in 2025, not necessarily new books in 2025)The Resurrectionist by A Rae DunlapThe Lost Story by Meg ShafferRemember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/12/top-fives-of-2025.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-7242356337682567236Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:10:00 +00002025-10-21T14:54:33.961-07:00On Saturday night, I and 2800 of my fellow Bramily* members had the joy of attending a one of a kind Brandi Carlile Band show here in Seattle, to get a sneaky preview of her new album, Returning to Myself.The show was an album playback and acoustic performance, so the only folks on stage were Brandi, the Hanseroth Twins, and Sista Strings, all seated in comfy couches and chairs. It started http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/10/brandi-carlile-album-playback-acoustic.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Seattle, WA, USA47.6061389 -122.332848119.295905063821152 -157.4890981 75.916372736178843 -87.1765981tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-3395837406161552933Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:36:00 +00002025-09-03T16:06:12.034-07:00Stopped by London for a couple days on the way back from Dublin, because if I'm not there at least twice a year, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Maybe a dozen years ago, someone asked me how many times I’d been to London, and I had no idea. It was only a handful of visits back then, but it was still enough that I had lost count. It’s probably my favourite city in the world, so I stop byhttp://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/08/london-calling.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0London, UK51.5072178 -0.127586223.196983963821154 -35.2838362 79.817451636178845 35.0286638tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-1772559206571464164Sat, 23 Aug 2025 13:49:00 +00002025-08-29T12:29:49.019-07:00So... what did you do last weekend? Oh, nothing much? Watched some TV? Well, I just took a quick little jaunt over to Dublin... No, really, I went all the way to Ireland for less than 2 days. By the time I got settled into the hotel after my halfway-round-the-world journey Friday night, it was 8pm, and only about 38 hours until I had to catch my lift back to the airport Sunday morning. So that http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/08/britpop-in-dublin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Dublin, Ireland53.3498053 -6.26030979.4579537170915842 -76.5728097 90 64.0521903tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-3692114891032008097Sat, 02 Aug 2025 23:28:00 +00002025-08-08T11:59:20.511-07:00 We're back, baby!I never did get around to starting a Substack, and I'm glad I didn't, but I didn't really start posting again here either... which I'm not so glad about. So I'm back now (with an option to get this as a newsletter if that's your bag), picking up where I left off. And committing to keep it updated going forward.Look, the world is ROUGH right now. Personally, socially, http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/08/welcome-back-globetrotter.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-5624507825437699185Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:18:00 +00002025-12-12T14:12:25.383-08:00I know, it seems like I only ever go to London. But that's kind of been true for the last couple of years... I still love to go new places, but I'm 100% OVER the actual mechanisms of travel. So most of my plans end up cancelled when even the tiniest hint of a hassle comes up -- flight time change, weather, me waking up with a sniffle -- and the ones I keep are ones where I don't want to miss the http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2025/06/catching-up-britpop-in-london.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0London, UK51.5072178 -0.127586223.196983963821154 -35.2838362 79.817451636178845 35.0286638tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-8140394560893607835Thu, 28 Nov 2024 18:39:00 +00002025-11-26T13:12:24.844-08:00For the last ten to fifteen years, I've typically spent Thanksgiving either out of the country, or on a long haul flight home, eating airplane food for my holiday dinner. I'm too much of a history buff to buy into the mythology or 'celebrate' the American Thanksgiving holiday, and don't care about missing a day of overeating with friends and/or family, so I prefer to spend the day anywhere but http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2024/11/catching-up-last-thanksgiving-in-london.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0London, UK51.5072178 -0.127586223.196983963821154 -35.2838362 79.817451636178845 35.0286638tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-7721201147333502772Sun, 07 Jul 2024 18:07:00 +00002025-11-07T12:43:48.606-08:00It's been well documented that London is my #1 city, and Robbie Williams is my #1 popstar, so when it was announced that he'd be headlining a night of BST Hyde Park again in July 2024, of course I was there.I landed at Heathrow on July 4th (because I love spending all the iconic American holidays in foreign lands), to spend a week in London with the Rob show right in the middle, carrying an http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2024/07/catching-up-london-bst-hyde-park-again.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0London, UK51.5072178 -0.127586223.196983963821154 -35.2838362 79.817451636178845 35.0286638tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-5954757353594869933Mon, 27 May 2024 20:31:00 +00002025-09-20T14:54:00.630-07:00When the announcement came out in spring of 2024 that Robbie Williams was having his first art exhibition at the Moco museum in Amsterdam, my last few days of vacation for the rest of the year were already all committed to trips I didn't want to change, and the show's run was set to end before I'd get a new grant of time off. So I was faced with the good employee / devoted fanatic's classic http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2024/05/catching-up-amsterdam-weekend-moco.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Amsterdam, Netherlands52.3675734 4.904138924.057339563821152 -30.2521111 80.677807236178836 40.0603889tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-5669873921358238851Mon, 22 Apr 2024 22:19:00 +00002025-10-17T15:08:52.583-07:00As a Gen X American, especially one with a country music loving dad, Willie Nelson and his songwriting have been omnipresent throughout my entire life, and I can't remember a day when I wasn't already a fan. His music was always around me, even if I was well into adulthood before I started listening to him on purpose.At some point in early 2024, it occurred to me that Willie was still http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2024/04/catching-up-willie-nelson-in-san-diego.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0San Diego, CA, USA32.715738 -117.16108384.4055041638211563 -152.3173338 61.025971836178847 -82.0048338tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-1776183572690249566Sat, 13 Jan 2024 21:29:00 +00002025-09-30T14:28:42.499-07:00Once upon a time... well... once upon late 2023, my friend Steve learned that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were taking a comedy show (the Restless Leg Tour) on the road, and as the good fans that we are, we had to go! But at that point, they were only stopping in a few cities, and Seattle wasn't one of them... but Portland was. So we excitedly got our tickets and planned a quick road trip.&http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2024/01/catching-up-tina-and-amy-live-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Portland, OR, USA45.515232 -122.6783853-11.768818742580351 167.0091147 90 -52.3658853tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-7934860732903359065Sun, 15 Oct 2023 21:56:00 +00002025-08-19T14:25:48.955-07:00I love Brandi Carlile, and have since the early 2000s demo CD days. I also hate going to the Gorge, and have since... I don't know... birth. So because the Gorge Amphitheatre in George is always Brandi's closest tour spot these days, I only ever see her play if I jet off someplace, and I'm always on the lookout for destination shows. Which meant that I couldn't pass up the opportunity in the fallhttp://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2023/10/catching-up-brandi-carlile-and-friends.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA, USA34.0907315 -118.32661465.7804976638211514 -153.4828646 62.400965336178842 -83.1703646tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-6091547372753700906Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:24:00 +00002025-08-15T15:17:19.062-07:00Fun fact about me (or sometimes not so fun, depending on their results): I've been a Scotland rugby supporter since the late 1990s, long before I ever visited and fell in love with Scotland, or got engaged and then un-engaged to one of its citizens, or made Edinburgh my second home. And as part of that fandom, I've gone to watch Scotland (along with a couple other teams) in every men's Rugby http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2023/09/catching-up-rugby-on-french-riviera.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0French Riviera, France43.2547731 6.637857700000001417.992535487552686 -28.5183923 68.517010712447316 41.7941077tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-6873944512799483437Mon, 13 Mar 2023 01:53:00 +00002025-08-06T08:40:31.866-07:00Picking up where we left off in my last pre-break post from Riga airport... I ended that snowy Saturday in March 2023 huddled in my rented flat in Edinburgh, wearing every stitch of dirty clothes I had on me, because the place was colder than a jilted polar bear's shoulder, and my luggage was somewhere in Germany.It all started with the snow bucketing down in Riga, which meant my plane took off http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2023/03/where-we-left-off-adventures-in-checked.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Edinburgh, UK55.953252 -3.18826727.643018163821154 -38.344517 84.263485836178845 31.967983tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-488065314802416820Sat, 11 Mar 2023 12:25:00 +00002023-03-11T04:25:40.510-08:00I'm currently watching giant snowflakes blow sideways past the window of an airport lounge in Latvia, awaiting my flight to Edinburgh. I started my current travels in London a week ago, cancelled a side trip to Lithuania to stay there longer, and have just spent 3 frozen days in Riga, where I saw my beloved popstar Robbie Williams again.  But I purposely haven't published anythinghttp://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2023/03/bon-voyage.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-3754136726448723158Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:06:00 +00002022-12-31T19:14:54.638-08:00It's been quite a while since I wrote one of these end-of-the-year-list blogs, so I figured it was time. But also, because everything since March 2020 has blurred together to feel like it's been either 2 weeks or 87 years, or both at the same time, I had to cover more than just 2022.So here they are, the books and music from the last 2 years that got a thumbs up from me:Books* Side Note before I http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/12/21-or-22-books-and-records-for-21-22.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-4669605968741812882Sun, 28 Aug 2022 17:00:00 +00002022-09-03T13:01:50.350-07:00I only seem to come to Munich for music. My first time here was back in 2013, for my second ever Robbie Williams show, and the last visit was 3 years later for Frightened Rabbit and Paws. This trip much more closely resembled that first one, in that it was also planned for a Robbie show, happened in August, and both times the night before the gig included big thunderstorms. Nobody asked me to http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/08/robbie-williams-live-in-munich-again.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-2271666032960845341Sun, 07 Aug 2022 22:20:00 +00002022-08-07T15:20:57.460-07:00 Last night I saw Brandi Carlile live in Chicago, in a crowd of 10,000. Last time I saw Brandi and the Twins live, I was one of maybe hundreds, and they didn't have a real record yet. And she was just as much of a rock star back then as she was on stage yesterday.I've been a lover of the BCB (Brandi Carlile Band) since 2003, and still have two demo CDs on my shelf alongside all the other bighttp://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/08/brandi-carlile-live-for-first-time-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Chicago, IL, USA41.8781136 -87.6297982-4.4325318887033873 -157.94229819999998 88.188759088703392 -17.317298199999996tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-7013484041492765605Sun, 19 Jun 2022 21:15:00 +00002022-06-19T14:15:15.797-07:00While the Robbie show in Stoke-on-Trent may have been the catalyst for my (triumphant?) return to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the bulk of my time there was spent just generally hanging out in two of the cities that I most missed while I wasn't able to travel.EdinburghFrom Stoke, I took the train north to Edinburgh, where I'd rented a flat for a few days. I figured ithttp://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/06/back-to-uk-part-3-edinburgh-london-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Edinburgh, UK55.953252 -3.18826714.317187074428624 -73.500767 90 67.124233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-2616080222655563329Mon, 13 Jun 2022 13:53:00 +00002022-06-13T06:53:26.197-07:00Even though it came at the beginning, the highlight of my trip — and the whole reason it happened, to be fair — was seeing my popstar at his hometown football stadium.Rob’s a proud native of Stoke-on-Trent, and an avid Port Vale supporter, but had never played a show there, despite always dreaming of it. And so he planned the Robbie Williams is Coming Home (an annoying English football reference http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/06/back-in-uk-part-2-robbie-williams.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0Stoke-on-Trent, UK53.0033369 -2.182740810.511771003704489 -72.4952408 90 68.1297592tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-383925827191770772Sun, 12 Jun 2022 15:01:00 +00002022-06-12T08:17:49.244-07:00Funny thing about taking a 2 ½ year break from international travel, you forget all your routines… including things like taking photos (never mind posting them!), and putting blogs out into the world.  Which is why I’m just now writing about the beginning of my trip when I only have a couple days left of it. Oops… oh well.    But all that aside… Didja hear? I left the http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2022/06/back-to-uk-part-1-getting-here.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5117838931243950727.post-4999850335533472135Mon, 03 Feb 2020 17:30:00 +00002020-02-03T09:30:02.463-08:00Recently I was on the Discogs, buying a cheap 45 from the UK, when I realised that with the price of the international shipping, I'd might as well buy something else at the same time, get my money's worth. I scrolled through the person's vinyl for sale, not much impressed, until I stumbled upon the perfect item, an album I must have. It was Pyromania, by Def Leppard. Ever since it arrived http://wheresgirl2.blogspot.com/2020/02/rock-rock-till-you-drop.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Sarah)0