A night of rawk – that almost wasn’t

So I like a band called Biffy Clyro. One of the remarkable things is that so does Belinda, and they are on her must see live list! We don’t generally share musical taste.

So I find out they are playing some shows in NL and decide to pick up some tickets and organise a babysitter. I did this all well in advance and we have been looking forward to it for a while.

Fast forward to the night of the event and Mr A is not feeling very well. Normally this is OK as we have a really great baby sitter who is fantastic with all of the kids. But Mr A being mummies boy and the fact we would be an hour away by train put some doubt as to whether we should go out.

In the end we put him down to sleep just fine and decided to go.

We trek down to Utrecht, a beautiful city and head towards what was to be a beautiful theatre, The Tivoli, to watch Biffy Clyro. We enter the venue and scan our tickets and are then ushered to an escalator. 

Escalators to never never at the Tivoli Vredenburg

This seems odd as the venue appeared to be on the next level in eyesight to where we entered the building. This escalator then seems to go up around 6 stories until we enter a big empty space with cloak room. We decide to check our coats in before we are ushered to a long set of stairs. By this stage I am super frustrated; have they sent us all the way to the top for our coats only to have to go all the way back down?

Tivoli Vredenburg

We climb the set of stairs and this takes up another 2 full floors before we enter a dimly lit room with a solo artist playing some guitar. This seems kind of cool but surely Biffy Clyro were supposed to play in a bigger room than this? Belinda heads up to the merchandise desk and notes that there are no Biffy Clyro shirts or anything? Just this guy Bernhoft?

Bernhoft? No that can’t be right that is the name of the room at the Tivoli? Scratching my head I think to myself surely I haven’t bought tickets to the wrong show? Oh yes I have. Bernhoft is the name of the guy on stage – not the theatre that Biffy Clyro are playing in. They are in fact on downstairs in the same venue and it is sold out. We arrived on the right day, to the right place with the wrong tickets. *BIG SAD FACE….

Now I am sure Bernhoft was great but I was in no state to stick around. We decided that tail between legs we would head out for a drink then head home. I was seriously devastated. As we head out we thought we might just see if someone had a ticket for sale but by the time we got down stairs the foyer was pretty empty as the band was to start any minute. If there was a scalper they had sold their tickets and moved on or just given up.

In the end Belinda sheepishly approaches the reception counter and says I don’t suppose you have a spare ticket? A bystander then says do you need a ticket? He was excited and we then get excited. Has he saved our night? We responds enthusiastically with a “yes we need two!”. He says to us sorry I have only one. The lady at reception then interrupts and says well actually this guy just gave us two tickets and said give them to someone to use. He said if you get some money for them great but otherwise hopefully they get used. Unbelievable. We got 2 of the last 3 tickets available and managed to get inside just in time to see the band walk on stage. They were amazing and I cannot believe our luck.

All is well that ends well and now we go back to back with Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. What a way to spend Monday and Tuesday night!