Month: May 2023

Free Lunchtime Concerts

A local meetup did free lunchtime concerts but when I tried to snag a ticket, they we all gone. Turns out, this didn’t matter as they let people in without tickets and anyhow, when the concert started there were always a few free seats. I went ahead and booked myself five lunchtime concerts for May. First up, the Concertgebouw is a magnificent building. It would be nice to see something in the big room rather than the small one.

Recorder and banjo
Recorder and guitar thing

The first week was some kind of recorder and guitar thing.

Piano and flute
Piano and flute

The second week was piano and flute.

Opera
Opera

Week three was opera.

String trio and oboe
String trio and oboe
String quartet
String quartet

Week four was half string trio and oboe and half string quartet.

Middle-eastern instruments
Middle-eastern instruments

Week five was very much in the middle-eastern mould, in some musical mode us Westerners don’t get to hear very often.

All in all, a worthwhile experience.

Dutch Weekend

This weekend, thanks to a friend from Bristol, I did a typically Dutch thing and spent a couple of hours in the sun on a boat.

A boat
One of many other boats going in the wrong direction.
A Long Straight Canal
A Long Straight Canal

We went anti-clockwise from Brouwersgracht, up the Jordaan, past the Rijksmuseum, up the side of Museumplein, across to the Amstel, past Station Centraal then back home.

The Margere Brug, the “skinny bridge”. Legend has it that two sisters on either side of the canal built a bridge so that they could see each other.

Nemo
Nemo, the science museum.
The central library
The central library, the Oba.
Station Centraal
Station Centraal

And so to home.

All in all, a lovely day even if the wind was a little nippy on the open water, despite it being a sunny 20C day. Only a little beer was consumed.