TSO

Last night Ann, The Son and I headed downtown to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon Center. Its been a concert I had been looking forward to since their tour was announced. Not only that, but I believed I had scored some seats close to the stage. The evening started out somewhat auspiciously, however. The plan was for Ann and I to take the Metro from Springfield and meet up with The Son in Crystal City. As we pulled into the Crystal City station, however, two gentlemen with suitcases rose to exit the train in front of us and took their sweet time in doing so, so as I reached the door, I heard the familiar refrain "Doors Closing". That's right, the doors closed before we could get off and the train pulled away. We got off at the next station and managed to contact The Son who got on the next train and we hooked up at Pentagon City. Once we were all together, the rest of the trip downtown was uneventful. Once we got downtown, we began to look for somewhere to eat. I had gotten a few suggestions from a fellow blogger (thanks Zan), but didn't have time to research her suggestions. Right across from the Verizon Center was a Legal Seafood. That sounded good to everyone so we headed on in. We were seated promptly and began looking over the menu. It all sounded good to me and since this an outing of sorts for us, I decided we could do it right and get appetizers and deserts as well. The Son ordered mussels and I ordered 1/2 dozen oysters. James, our server, brought me an assortment, 2 from Oregon, 2 from NJ and 2 from Cape Cod. The Cape Cods were the best of the lot. Its been a while since I've had oysters and man were they good. I finished off those and followed with a seafood casserole and Boston Creme Pie for desert. With dinner over, we headed across the street to the arena. There was an incredibly long line to get in. They didn't seem to have but 2 doors open, which seemed pretty dumb given the large number of people waiting to get inside. Once we were inside, we had no idea which direction to head. Our seats were on the floor so all the permanent signs for seat sections were of no use to us. We had to ask an usher for help and she got us heading in the right direction. Our seats were as good as I had hoped. Maybe 8 to 10 rows back. Settling in, we overheard others talking about how many times they had seen TSO. Seems someone behind us had seem them 7 times over the years. The show was a little late getting started as most shows do it would seem, but it was definitely worth the wait. TSO puts on one of the most incredible shows I've ever seen. We were close enough to the stage that when the pyros went off, we could feel the heat. The first half of the show was their holiday music, which was as good as ever. The second half was some of the music from their new Night Castle CD, which turned out better then I had been expecting. They finished up with with Christmas Cannon, which I think is about my favorite piece that they do. To you give you a bit of the flavor of the event I'll leave you with two videos I shot during the concert. First up, the Wizard in Winter:

Well maybe not. The video wouldn't upload. Instead a picture of the The Son enjoying his mussels.