I had never taken the boat to a concert but since Sydney offered us the opportunity, we jumped on the ferry to the Olympic Park to go see U2.

Yes, U2.

Feng and I are big fans of the band and we saw them in Ottawa in 2005. That year had been a busy year for us—we eloped, I got permanent residence status and we opened a business (we closed it a couple of years later but still, a good experience). U2 is our good-luck band, I guess.

So when we heard they were playing in Sydney while we were there, we snatched a couple of general admission tickets. Everything worked out perfectly.

The band played at the ANZ stadium, apparently pronounced “ah-en-zed” and not “ah-en-zee” like we thought (I’m not fluent in Australian yet, although I do use words such as “mate” and “rubbish” to be understood Down Under).

Jay Z was opening the show, which I found was quite strange considering it’s not exactly the same kind of music as U2. It was funny actually, you could easily tell the people who came for Jay Z from the U2 crowd!

The general admission seats were on the floor so we were pretty close to the stage. While we were waiting for the show to start, Feng asked one of the security guards if we could go “backstage,” in the inner row by the catwalk and the stage. I think he was joking but the security guard just shrugged and opened us the door: “sure, go ahead.” We couldn’t believe our luck and didn’t quite understand how we ended up there, but here we were, a few metres from the Edge and from Bono.

The show was awesome. The band played a lot of the old songs, like One, Sunday Bloody Sunday, With Or Without You and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. It lasted for a few hours and we came back to the hostel almost deaf and mute from singing along, but happy and dreamy.

Sorry if some of the pictures are not the best, I only took a small point-and-shoot camera and not the DSLR this time. And thank you all for your comments on the previous articles! I do read them all and enjoy your insights!