Boise, Idaho

In all the years I've toured (and having performed about 1,000 shows), I can't believe this was my very first time in Boise! We played in Idaho before (the gorgeous Sun Valley), and I am glad we finally made it to the capitol! We had only 26 hours here, but I loved the town, the hotel and the venue.

THE GIST + LINKS: 

We spent 1 day in Boise, Idaho (pop. 240,000, state capitol since 1864) while on tour with our dear friend/talented artist - Beth Hart
We stayed & ate at the beautiful Grove Hotel in the heart of downtown Boise.
We performed a SOLD OUT show at the spectacular Egyptian Theatre  Feb 9, 2018 (1,400 seat venue, built in 1927) 

THE DRIVE

It was a 500 mile drive from Seattle. It took us about 9.5 hours.  We had a couple of quick stretch/bathroom stops on the way and one stop for dinner.
Thing is, I love (eating at and supporting) independently owned restaurants. But they were hard to find on the drive from Seattle to Boise. I rely on Google Maps (and Yelp and Tripadvisor as well) for locating restaurants and for looking at reviews, but I could not find anything that was open and had decent rating. The only thing we found that fit my criteria was Fiesta En Jalisco, a family-owned restaurant in Ellensburg, WA. It was a good Mexican restaurant, but what I loved most was the decor. Every seat and table was hand-carved wood. I accidentally deleted the photo I took (after leaving a review on Google), so I captured a screenshot of my own photo from Google (crazy, right?), see below. Isn't this place beautiful? I love when people put love and care into their establishments. Makes a world of difference.


THE HOTEL

Nick & I were very tired when we pulled up to the hotel. But the hotel staff was very friendly, and our room was beautiful (room 732).
First order of business was taking a bath. When tired and sleep-deprived, I often get really cold (plus, it was about 38 outside). Taking a bath was a perfect remedy.

Here is a screenshot of my silly Instagram boomerang in the comfy hotel bathrobe (this blog feature doesn't let me post videos, damn it):
(but you can see the video in my Tour Documentary, free, if you join our 2 SONGS A MONTH CLUB)


I loved the tree painting on the wall:

Beautiful photo of horses:

And a very nice large bathroom & amenities:

In the morning we worked out in the gym, did laps in the pool (huge pool!) and sat in the Jacuzzi for a minute:


Look at the city view from the Jacuzzi:
Nick & I had an early dinner at the hotel restaurant.
We had no time to search for food elsewhere, but the restaurant was great, thankfully.
I took a couple of artistic shots (do you think they're artistic?) :)
​​​​​​
BOISE

Nick & I did a lot of work that afternoon, catching up on millions of emails and social media stuff. I didn't realize how stern I look when I work, but apparently I do! :)
Ignore my face and look at the view of Boise behind me:
Better yet, just look at the view without the stern Marina:

We had a few minutes to go explore Boise. We were just a couple of blocks away from the State Capitol building (built 1905) and the Capitol Park.
So lovely! Here is Nick posing with a statue of Lincoln:


Beautiful St Michael's Episcopal Cathedral:

THE VENUE:

Built in 1927, the Egyptian Theatre in Boise was spectacular. Take a look a the photos below.
Funny note: our green room was located underneath the stage, and it was basically the bowels of the theatre. It looked like a dungeon and is reportedly haunted!  Please see our Tour Documentary for the video from our dungeon :)


Soundcheck:
Singing "Fire In The Sky":

Next three photos below are by Ron Gardner. At every show I asked the audience to take photos because we often come back from tours with literally one blurry photo of us. So now we ended up with a lot! :)

Getting people to sing along to "Born To The Stars":

Awwww :)

The audience was amazing. They sang like awesome super cool maniacs to Born To The Stars and were great and loving.
Many of them told us they drove from very far away to be there. Thanks to Ron Gardner yet again for this photo at the merch table:
After the show, we took this photo of the city, I love the lit up Capitol Building in the distance:

And took this silly photo in the hotel:


Sadly, we had to leave right after the show. Our stay at the hotel was arranged but we thought we should try to gain ground in order to get to South Lake Tahoe where we were playing the next day. Any performer will tell you it's nearly impossible to go straight to bed after the show. We knew we were better off driving for a couple of hours and getting a hotel somewhere on the way. Little did we know, there would be no hotel or cell phone reception for many, many (many!) miles ahead.

To be continued.... :)

P.S. Join our 2 SONGS A MONTH CLUB at www.patreon.com/MarinaV to watch the full tour documentary.
Here is the trailer: