We’re now LIVE in the Press Centre waiting for the first dress rehearsal to start, but before we do, we’d better tell you about yesterday’s goings on here in Baku!

We arrived in the Press Centre yesterday in time to see the second dress rehearsals of the Big 5 plus Azerbaijan. All 6 I felt put on really strong performance, especially Sabina from Azerbaijan who’s performance gave us our second goosebumps moment of the year! The whole performance with the lights projecting onto her dress looks great and we think Sabina is going to do really well in the final! The feed went down in the press centre so we decided to go to the arena to have a look, and the arena itself is really impressive, the stage looks great and the green room in the centre of the audience is really going to create a great atmosphere come the announcement of finalists and the voting in the final itself.

Pastora also gave a strong performance for Spain, and I think this could give Spain their best result in years, but then they haven’t done all that well recently! Lots of people in the Press Centre seem to be tipping Germany as a possible winner. We’re not so sure, it is a great song but it’s a bit of a grower and definitely takes more than one listen to get in your brain. We think that if one of the Big 5 is going to win, it is more likely going to be Italy. Nina Zilli have another confident performance and this one looks great on the screen too, and is exactly the type of song that is going to appeal to both juries and televoters alike.

Engelbert’s performance for the UK was adequate, though we still think there’s something missing from his performance and we think it’s going to be forgotten in the final shake up. We’re still loving Anggun’s dancers and the performance was a lot better than yesterday, though we still feel it needs a bit of work. Fingers crossed they will get there!

Sadly we didn’t get the chance to interview any of the artists but we did manage to grab Ivi Adamou for a quick chat and she told us she’s feeling really positive and confident about her performance in Tuesday’s semi final!

After the last rehearsal from Germany, we decided to go to the Israeli party in EuroClub as we didn’t need an invite. It was quite a bit quieter than the night before, which meant we were able to get served quicker, sadly there weren’t any free refreshments as promised on the flyer! Still the beers were still only 3 Manat and they are HUGE, as everything seems to be in Baku, so we weren’t complaining! We had been promised some performances by some of the artists, including the Israelis, but we got so distracted chatting to our Eurofriends that we managed to miss most of those, though we did manage to catch Loreen performing “Euphoria”, which went down a storm in the club, with everyone singing along and waving their hands. Loreen seemed really touched by the reaction, and you can tell she really apprecites all the support she gets!

We continued partying on until the small hours dancing away to Eurovision classics like Conquistador, Iki Dakika and even La Coco Dance, where some of my Swedish friends decided to start a conga line all the way around EuroClub! After we heard Don’t Play That Song Again, we decided to take Nicki’s advice and head home to the apartments to have some much needed rest!