Winter arrives in Raleigh and the cast celebrate Thanksgiving in Dayton

Raleigh, North Carolina was where we got our first real taste of winter. The beginning of the week started off warm and allowed us to walk around and explore the city a bit. There is an area of small lanes paved in red brick called City Market that was a lot of fun. They had one restaurant, Big Ed's, which is almost a landmark in Raleigh. It was established in the mid 1900's and serves up some of the best country cooking the south has to offer. The staff if very friendly and if you're lucky you'll be there on a day when Big Ed himself is in the restaurant. He has his own table in the middle of the dining room and even a chair with his name on it that's permanently reserved in case he decides to pop in.

The day we were traveling up to North Carolina from Florida tickets were on sale for a multi-state lottery which had a jackpot of $253 million. It seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up so everyone in the company gave $5 toward a collection for a group of tickets. Even though we knew it was a long (long) shot it was still fun to talk about what we'd each do with the money if we won. The most common things were to buy a car, buy a house, invest it, and of course spend a little on something special for ourselves. We were all discussing this while warming up before the show and by the time came for Act I to begin everyone was very excited and sure we would all be rich by the end of the night.

The drawing occurred Tuesday night so we all gathered in the hotel bar after the show to check the winning numbers against those on our tickets. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, we didn't end up winning but it was well worth the $5 for the fun of playing. And you never know-we might be lucky the next time!

We left the east coast and headed to the town of Dayton, Ohio in midwest America. This was the week of Thanksgiving so our schedule was a bit different. We had Thanksgiving Day (which is Thursday) off and then two shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Knowing that you have six shows in three days coming up is great incentive to really enjoy the day off in the middle of the week. Thursday started off with a wonderful buffet at the hotel which included the traditional "Turkey Day" foods like mashed potatoes, stuffing and, of course, turkey, and also omelet and waffle stations for those who wanted something a bit different.

After the meal we relaxed a bit and then met up again in the early evening to go bowling. This has become a Thanksgiving tradition on the Riverdance tours, probably because almost everything else is closed and it's a nice activity to do after overindulging at dinner.

The lobby of the theatre had a wonderful Christmas display that that they put up every year. It is a series of window boxes that used to be used in a local department store display around the holidays. Each one was different and they were all animated. One was of animals playing in the snow in the woods, another depicted a family around the Christmas tree, another was Santa in a candy shop giving sweets to the children and the last one was a scene of children preparing to go to bed and wait for Santa on Christmas Eve. They were very charming in an old fashioned way and certainly got everyone in the holiday spirit.