Have you ever driven 4 hours to go see a concert? Well, after this weekend I can now say I have. My parents and I took the 4 hours trip from Toronto to Cleveland Saturday morning for a Saturday night concert and returned back on Sunday. Who did we drive 4 hours to see? Kaleo, an Icelandic band that we had become obsessed with the past few months. We heard that they were opening for The Lumineers and decided to make the trek and see them live.

I thought that after this weekend I would have simply enjoyed a concert but I actually learned a bit more about myself. If you’ve ever taken a road trip or traveled to another city/country you probably know the feeling I’m about to attempt to explain. That indescribable feeling of arriving at a new place and discovering it for the first time. When we walked into the hotel room I couldn’t wait to leave our stuff and start exploring this new city. The travel bug hit me hard because I quickly realized that we were only there for 1.5 days if that at most. Our first stop was to basically the only thing in Cleveland, The Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

Top 3 Things I Learnt About Cleveland

1. They have a multitude of arenas… They have one for basically every sport. They have Progressive Field for baseball, Quickens Loans for basketball, FirstEnergy Stadium for football, Wolstein Center at CSU for concerts & sporting events for the university.
2. They have an abundance of statues. They also have these statues of speakers, (‘Rock Box’) spread out over the downtown core, which actually plays musically randomly. See below for just a few of them.
   

   ROCK BOX Installation

   

   Free Stamp located in Willard Park

   

   Fountain of Eternal Life

3. The downtown core of Cleveland is empty during the weekends. We barely saw anyone walking outside during the weekend! It wasn’t until the evening when there were games and concerts happening that we saw people.

But let’s get back to the reason we went to Cleveland. The Concert!!!

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We were ushered to our seats two rows from the floor… By far the best concert seats I’ve ever had.

 

Susto was the pre-pre-openers.

Finally, it came for Kaleo to come on and my mom & I could hardly contain ourselves. They sounded exactly like their album if not better! JJ’s voice was amazing and he hit every note with such ease.

But if you want to hear more of their songs check out some of my favs:

Vor í Vaglaskógi, an Icelandic folk song

Broken Bones – one of their more hardcore songs

My heart was complete after seeing Kaleo live but we also got to see The Lumineers. I personally only knew roughly 4 of their songs but boy do I know all of them now. They gave an amazing performance with some surprises along the way. From a moving performance (literally) to confetti canon to the lead singer running into the crowd. Wesley Schultz the lead singer shared the inspiration of some of their songs which was great to hear. You could tell the entire band loved being on stage and performing.

This entire concert experience has definitely made my top list of concerts I’ve EVER seen. I’m now a Lumineers fan. An added bonus to the concert was the fact that it was an adventure getting there. I love road tripping because if you learn at least one thing about this new city it’s totally worth it.

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What’s your favourite thing about road trips? What’s the best concert you’ve been to? Message me or tweet me.