August Wrap-up

Here's some of the highlights of the last month of Summer in Amsterdam.

• Not really a highlight, but important nonetheless- Nana was diagnosed with cancer, and Samflew back to Australia to spend 2 weeks with her family.  Sam really enjoyed the chance to be with the family during this tough time, and also had a fun weekend in Sydney with friends before coming back to Amsterdam
• Nick and Erin's visit (as featured on Nick's blog)- it was great to see these guys and share Australian impressions of Europe as they spent a few nights with us during their European holiday .  We went out for dinner a few times including Vapiano's at Rembrantplein (amongst the Gay Pride festival) and Toscana's at Haarlemmerstraat, and a nice afternoon in the Vondelpark
• Sam's cousin Kata and her husband Brenton spent a night here on their roadtrip through Europe.  We had a really great dinner at Bazar turkish restaurant on Albert Cuypstraat
• BBQ at Sybran's house, enjoying the summer weather with some friends
• Sanne's birthday party at Almere, which is only a half hour drive but took us almost 2 hours due to sub-optimal public transport.  Almere is a beautiful suburb North East of Amsterdam, across the IJ.  Sanne and Hans' house was really nice and backed onto a canal.  It was very different to the busy and often cramped city of Amsterdam
• Stepping up to help out on the hosting and welcoming team at church, which is not my usual style but they need people and I'm keen to help, so we'll see how it goes
• Small screen highlights- Olympics, Walking Dead, Falling Skies, How I Met Your Mother
• Paper highlights- Finally finished Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, a long and often difficult but very rewarding read. ALso started Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea

Boy & Bear at the Paradiso

Aussie folk rock favourites Boy & Bear were in Amsterdam this week.  They were playing at the Paradiso, an old church converted into one of Amsterdam's best and most famous musical venues.  The hall is a good size, small enough to feel intimate but big enough to have atmosphere. Even better, it's only 1km away from where we live, so no need for cramming onto public transport or looking for a carpark.

Last time I saw Boy & Bear was about a year ago at the Enmore in Sydney.  Compared to that performance, they were more confident, relaxed and talkative which must come with experience, and also probably because the crowd here was much smaller than at their home town performance.  They possibly took this relaxation a bit too far when they at least twice had to restart songs because they started at the wrong time or sang the wrong words.  Fortunately they were good about it- they apologised, had a bit of a laugh and carried on with the awesome tunes.

My friend Sybran came along and, if his reaction to hearing Boy and Bear for the first time is anything to go by, I think they have just won themselves quite a few new Dutch fans.  I also really enjoyed the music and the venue, and will definitely be making an effort to visit this great music hub more frequently.

Heat Wave

This weekend was uncomfortably hot.  Being Australian I'm ashamed to admit this, but the 35 degree days were so unexpected.  Even at midnight it was high twenties, which makes it very difficult to sleep in our apartment with its small double-glazed windows and lack of ceiling fans.

It was, however, beautiful weather to go to the beach.  I went to Muiden with some friends from church, where we went by boat to an island out in the IJmeer.  Muiden itself was a cute little town on the water's edge, where lots of people were having morning coffee at the cafes.  It was very sleepy though, and you would have to be very patient to live there because the main road had a swing bridge on it which would open up to let boats through, meaning that everyone with their cars and bikes just had to wait for 10 minutes until the bridge closed again.

On the island, it was no beach by any Australian standards, but it was really nice to be near the water, play football, swim and barbecue.  The area was packed with boats, from small dinghies to larger tourist cruise boats, and many sailing boats.  Everyone was relaxing and enjoying the sun, because despite its heat there are not many opportunities to do so in Holland. The sun was scorching, and there was a lot of very sunburnt guys that evening

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Summer Holiday Part 11

On our last night in Paris, and the last night of our holiday, we went to see the Eiffel Tower.  We caught the metro to Trocadero where we had a great view of the tower, despite the pouring rain. 

Our last dinner together was had at a little bistro around the corner.  It served basically pub food, but it was good and cheap, and we entertained ourselves by making paper hats.  Our waiter was a champ and we convinced him to wear a hat, and there was a British lady at the table next to us who also wore one of our hats.  It was a really fun night.

After dinner we went back to see the eiffel tower lit up in the dark, and it was incredible to see. It was the night before Bastille Day, and there was apparently some lights display that happened on the hour, but at 10:30 it was between displays, and we didn't want to stand around in the rain.  We rushed home in the hope that we might be able to see it from the rooftop terrace that our apartment was advertised as having, but when we got back we found that there was no rooftop terrace.

The next morning, our last day, we had to be out of the apartment by 11am, but because we were in a self-serviced apartment and not a hotel we could not leave our bags there, so we caught the metro to the main station (Gare du Nord) and left our bags in storage there, as this is where our train home would leave from later that day. We stopped for a coffee and had a bit of a wander around, but because it was a public holiday most things were closed, and it was not a terribly interesting area of the city, so we caught the metro to Luxembourg and visited the gardens. 

Fortunately the whether was much nicer than when I had been here the previous day, and we had a great time relaxing on the public chairs in the sun.  At the fountain we hired a toy sailing boat and set it out into the water where it floated around the pool at the mercy of the winds along with all the other sailing boats. 

After a bit more sitting around in the park for a while longer, it was time to head back to the train station.  We had one last coffee together, and as our train's details flickered up onto the revolving flap timetable board, we said our final goodbyes which was very sad.  It made it a bit easier that only 3 and a half hours later we were home (almost 30 hours before our friends would be), relaxing on the couch, preparing for life to return to normal.