An evening with Coldplay ...

...passing through the Manchester Christmas Market!

We’d been waiting for this day for ages, but did not start in the best way. After buying the tickets on ebay ages ago, they never turned up …[Hopefully we will get a refund from paypal!!! Fingers crossed. Beware of buying tickets on ebay!!!] Anyway, my two friends and I decided to go to Manchester MEN Arena and try our luck with a “friendly tout”….Bad weather conditions, roads as frozen as ice rinks, all trains to Manchester full (perhaps because of the concert?), but our “love” for Coldplay is too strong to get stopped by these small details…We decided to park at a Metro Station in Greater Manchester to avoid the traffic in the city centre (the MEN Arena is exactly in the city centre of course!!!). After 45 minutes trying to find a parking space near a Metro station finally we got on a tram towards the city centre.





In spite of not having any tickets yet, we headed toward the Christmas Market. Just to relax and not to waste the day totally. Fantastic! German, Dutch, French stalls offering any kind of merchandises ….




…but above all lovely food!!!!

Dutch cheese(s)...

German Wurst ...

French/Belgian chocs!

Here we are sharing a Super Bratwurst (don't be fooled, we had already a German Flammkuchen…)…

But this one was too tempting to share (for your information, Mini Dutch pancake with Nutella and cream)….

With a full belly and in a better mood we even got lucky with the tickets and went in….and we had quite decent seat positions…



Then finally the Coldplay…..what can I say…..divine!!!!!!!!!

Chris Martin, Coldplay’s frontman and dazzling performer…singer, composer etc etc.

Large globes were suspended over the stage; in them were projected colors, patterns, and footage of the band members appearing in dizzying montages, like here in the title song “Viva la Vida. “Viva la Vida” is their forth album inspired by the (French) Revolution but at the same time celebrating life, freedom and condemning the futility of all wars…

The high points were Yellow with large yellow balloons full of confetti and then Parachutes. As the songs built momentum, what seemed to be millions of multicolored paper butterflies fluttered down from above, a brilliant display that left the crowd's eyes as overwhelmed as its ears.

A performance with a great heart, deep soul, energy and even intimacy from a band often knocked for being expertly bland. We did get all the somehow predictable arena rock tricks – giant balloons bouncing around during Yellow; an acoustic interlude which saw all four members appearing on a podium at the back of the hall. But that’s what I like in a concert, it is not only the good music that I can always listen to from a CD, but show, “spettacolo”, being blown away by colours, music, dancing, singing ….

An evening to remember…