Happy TUESDAY! I was planning on having this post up on Friday but didn't get finished, I didn't realize how talkative I was going to get. 😜 NONETHELESS, today I am recapping Kenny's and my trip to Philadelphia for the Eras Tour weekend before last, along with some tips I have if you're attending one of the upcoming dates.
Taylor Swift music sort of accidentally became the soundtrack to our relationship - the 1989 album came out right after we first started dating in 2014, and was definitely the soundtrack of that year of school, at least for me! I got Kenny on board with her music and then for our first Valentine's Day together in 2015 he got me tickets to the 1989 Tour in D.C. We had nosebleed seats but had the best time! Since then, Kenny got to know all of her music and became an even bigger fan of Taylor Swift than me - yes, really!
We went to the Reputation Tour in D.C. with Kenny's best friend and his (now) fiancé, and when the Eras Tour was announced, Kenny was chomping at the bit to see her again. He fought Ticketmaster tooth and nail to get tickets when they came out, and we ended up with the BEST seats ever - fourth row! I don't even know if I would've gone to this tour if Kenny wasn't so set on getting tickets - I know it was a pain for a lot of people and I don't know if I would've been able to deal with the ticket sale debacle! BUT we made it and I'm so grateful - it really was the experience of a lifetime.
So before I get into the recap, I wanted to highlight some tips I have for the tour if you're attending one of the upcoming dates...
- Make bracelets! In case you haven't seen, lots of people are making friendship bracelets to trade or give away during the tour. I had so much fun bonding with other fans over bracelets! For mine, I used these letter beads, these metallic beads, and this elastic. I also superglued the knot on each bracelet to ensure they were secure. I ran out of metallic beads before I ran out of letters, and it made just under 40 bracelets for reference!
- Wear earplugs. I definitely wouldn't have worn earplugs if I hadn't seen other people recommending it, but I'm SO glad I did. It's crazy loud in the stadium and the earplugs don't affect the sound of the music, just bring it down a few notches. Kenny and I both wore these because they're supposed to be ideal for concerts, but there are a lot of different options out there.
- Bring the largest bag your venue allows. I'm an overpacker/overpreparer (#virgo), and I was very glad that our venue allowed guests to bring a larger bag - I used this clear tote and it had plenty of space for everything I wanted to bring, including an extra pair of shoes...
- Wear or bring comfortable shoes. I wore these insane platforms which were not comfortable at all (believe it or not! 😂) I knew that there was no way I'd last all night in them, so I brought a pair of sneakers to change into. I had MULTIPLE stadium employees stop me and tell me that I was the only smart girl they'd seen at all three concerts for bringing backup shoes. 😂 They said they saw countless girls limping out barefoot at the end of the night with their shoes in their hands, and I cannot imagine wearing uncomfortable shoes for the entire concert - Taylor plays for three and a half hours!
- Eat a good lunch, and sneak in a snack. Food at stadiums is expensive, and the lines are crazy long. I stood in a relatively short line for almost an hour and nearly missed the start of Taylor's set! Most venues *technically* don't allow outside food, but I was able to sneak in a couple of protein bars and packs of Belvitas for Kenny and me without any issues. The same goes for water - security will often let you enter with a sealed water bottle, or an empty reusable one.
- Don't miss the start of Taylor's set! If you're not at your seats before the start of the show, pay attention to the house music - "Applause" by Lady Gaga is the last song that plays before Taylor goes on; I heard this from someone who went to one of the Atlanta dates and it was true for us too, so I assume it's true for all the dates.
- Get a cab after the show, don't deal with Uber/Lyft. I'm well versed in the hellaciousness of trying to snag an Uber or Lyft ride after a concert. 😂 It's an awful experience if you're trying to leave even within two hours of the concert ending because traffic is just crazy - it's nearly impossible to get a driver to accept your ride, and when they do they often cancel due to traffic. Remarkably though, there always seem to be an abundance of cab drivers waiting right outside and ready to take rides. You may have pay slightly more, but it's worth saving the heartache of going up against tens of thousands of other concert-goers to get a unicorn Uber ride.
Now onto our trip! Admittedly, I've shaded Philadelphia in previous posts, and while Kenny and I still don't love it there, we had a much better trip this time than we have during previous trips! We got into town around 6:30pm on Saturday (our concert was on Sunday) and checked into our hotel. We changed clothes and headed downtown for dinner.
Kenny and I are vegetarian but always love trying fun vegan food when we go to bigger cities, and Philadelphia has a ton of options! We made dinner reservations at Monster Vegan and it was so cool there! Everything is monster-themed, the lighting is cool and they had old monster movies projected onto the wall. Kenny got vampire fangs. 😂 And they had a skeleton at the DJ booth!
I got the "Elvira's Movie Macabre" cocktail which was right up my alley - gin, elderflower liqueur, creme de violette, and lemon juice.
We got the General Tso's seitan wings as a starter, which were delish - I could go for an order right now, as a matter of fact!
For our mains, Kenny got the cheesesteak hoagie and I got the linguine with clams which I loved. We also got oyster mushroom "calamari" which is usually an add-on to pasta dishes but we got it on the side, and that was honestly my favorite thing we had - I LOVE oyster mushrooms and the breading they were fried in was so good.
After dinner on Saturday, we headed back to our hotel to get some sleep before concert day!
On Sunday, we got ready and headed into downtown so we'd have plenty of time to get to the stadium in time for check in. We stopped for lunch at Triangle Tavern which Kenny's friend recommended - they have a ton of vegan options along with "real" food. The weather was perfect so we sat outside!
We both got the vegan cheesesteak which was really good! I didn't super love it because I don't really like sandwiches like that in general, but it was a great vegan option and Kenny liked it better than the vegan cheesesteak he had gotten the night before. They also had great cocktails on the menu, I wish I had gotten one but I also didn't wanna get too crazy too early in the day. 😂
After lunch, we walked around for a while to kill time before heading to the venue for the concert. We stopped by a cute plant nursery called Urban Jungle that had a ton of plants and beautiful, fragrant dried bouquets. We also hit up a sneaker store - Kenny always finds at least one wherever we go!
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| Clear stadium bag | Sunglasses (Le Specs dupe!) |
A little after 2:00, we called a Lyft and headed to the stadium! We had VIP check-in which started at 3:00, so we wanted to make sure to find our gate in plenty of time. The employees outside the stadium were not very helpful at all in helping us find our gate - we knew the exact gate we were supposed to go to and Kenny asked at least five or six different people how to get there and none of them knew, so it was definitely a good thing that we got there in plenty of time to get in line for check-in.
Once we got checked in, it was pretty smooth sailing! At security, they pretty much did NOTHING to actually check our bags... We just walked in through a metal detector (which went off for everyone since we all had phones on us) and they did nothing else to check our bags or anything, so it was easy peasy, but a little alarming that we could've had any sort of unauthorized contraband (including snacks... which I did smuggle in 😂).
Once we got checked in, we waited in line again to get into the actual stadium, and then once the "VIPs" got let in, we were sort of sequestered to a certain section and not allowed to go to our seats until public check-in, which I'm fairly sure began at 4:30. Most people took this as time to take photos, get food and drinks, and chill. Kenny and I were the first ones of the night to get photos with this fabulous prop! 😂
A moment for my shoes! Like I said... NOT comfortable, but so fabulous. 😍 I got a ton of compliments on them! I brought a pair of sneakers to change into once these got old and I'm SO glad I did.
I didn't get a good picture of the back of my dress, but it had a giant pink bow! It's old from from H&M.
Kenny's shirt was amazing. 😂 It's old Taylor merch from 2007! He got it on Depop and it was brand new when it came in, which is crazy because it's so old!
The people who sat next to us were so fabulous and fun, we got so lucky! You can kind of see one of them sitting next to Kenny laughing at us. 😂 She took a bunch of great videos of the concert so we made a shared album with her after the show to share videos and photos!
The concert was SO GOOOOD. Fearless is one of "our" songs, and she played it right in front of Kenny and me, it was so special. 😭💗 I was so excited to see what the two surprise songs would be at our
show, and we got "The Best Day" and "Hey Stephen" - I love Fearless so I
was really excited about those! She played for three and a half hours straight and it did NOT feel that long - and I always get tired toward the end of concerts! I loved all of her sparkly outfits, I was ogling at her boots all night. 😍
Our seats were fourth row and SO AMAZING. Kenny always said when Taylor Swift toured again he wanted to be on the floor, and he fought Ticketmaster tooth and nail to get our seats and it was the most amazing experience, it gives me post-concert depression thinking about it!! The only downside was that Kenny got the VIP package and our VIP boxes never came! I'm writing this post about 10 days after our show and we still haven't received them, despite Kenny getting in contact with customer service about them, so that was definitely a bummer but not the end of the world.
I won't lie, I had some anxiety going into the concert because I'd heard a bunch of horror stories about how long food and bathroom and merch lines were, but it really wasn't THAT bad, and definitely wasn't any worse than I expected it to be.
The worst of the lines that I had to deal with was about an hour before the concert to get us some waters for the show and waited in a relatively short line for the entire time!! I was literally the last person in line to get their order before the show started, and I RAN as fast as I could back down to our seats... Only to get there and Kenny wasn't there! The girl we sat next to was like "Where's your husband? He went to look for you!" And I had no idea where he was or when he'd get back, the cell service was abysmal in the stadium so we couldn't text or call each other! LUCKILY he got back just a minute later - he had seen me coming down the stairs to the floor and was nervous they weren't going to let me in because he had the tickets on his phone, but luckily he made it back right on time for the countdown to start on the stage screens!
We had to snap one last pic after the show ended! People were running around collecting the confetti from the finale. 😂
Kenny and I didn't care about getting any tour merch, but he was fully prepared to get some bootleg merch outside of the stadium. 😂 He got this shirt and I immediately put it on because I was FREEZING! He got it for like $15 and it's super cute! You can't really tell, but the text is gold glitter. 😍 Will it make it through the wash? Probably not, but we'll see. 😂
We went straight to Xfinity Live after the show to hunker down until we could get a ride to our hotel. Xfinity Live is the MOVE if you're at an event at Lincoln Financial Field, the Wells Fargo Center, or Citizen's Bank Park - it's a big bar right in the middle of all of them and a great place to hang out after an event. We were STARVING after the concert so we got some pizza and I had a pretty amazing vodka soda. 😜 They definitely knew their audience, they had a DJ playing Taylor Swift music and they were playing Taylor Swift videos on the walls. Actually, everyone in Philly was showing up for Taylor swift all weekend! Her music was playing everywhere, from Lyfts to gas stations.
Despite our best efforts, we ended up victims of the post-concert rideshare horror show. 😂 We kept getting rides accepted by drivers who "arrived" but were nowhere to be found and wouldn't answer our calls, and I'm fairly sure they were running cancellation fee scams haha. Traffic WAS crazy, but they didn't have to say they'd arrived if they were still blocks away. ANYWAY, while it's really hard to get an Uber/Lyft right after the concert, cabs seem to always be in abundance right outside the venue. We've never taken a cab before because they're always expensive, but this time we were sick of the stress of Lyfts cancelling on us and only had to haggle with our driver a little to score a $50 ride, which seemed reasonable for the time. That guy drove like a MANIAC - he had no regard for any of the rules of the road but he got us the heck home, which is all we wanted! 😂
All in all, it was such a magical trip and definitely a bucket list experience at the concert! I'm so glad that Kenny got to have this experience because it was even more important to him than it was to me. The look on his face the whole time was priceless, he truly had the time of his life and I had the best time there with him. 😍 If you're going to an upcoming tour date, have the BEST TIME - I know you will!!
xoxx, Laura
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