We had a fantastic time in Amsterdam on the weekend!
This is not just any old city, you know! It is a place I have paid due homage to for twenty years, and for very good reason,. The most relaxing and chilled-out place on the planet (with or withouth the herbals - which I don't do any more, not wanting to waste an entire three night stay!), this visit paid us back in spades...
We may have missed Amsterdam Pride (which was apparently a complete washout, weather-wise), but we managed to catch the Hartjesdag festival in the Zeedijk, the oldest area of the city. "Hearts Day" is an annual restoration of an ancient carnival from the early days of Dutch independence, where men dressed as women and women dressed as men for some reason lost in the mists of time. Banned under the Nazis needless to say, it was revived a few years back and is now fully celebrated with style by the local gay scene...
We had bearded nuns and a whole gamut of demi-drag-clad tall people (Amsterdam being the home of giants, the sight of fully-grown blokes in heels, big wigs and moustaches is quite scary), and, best of all - opera singers regaling the audience from upstairs pub windows! A remarkable and unforgettable experience, indeed.
On the Sunday we found ourselves down the Zeedijk again, but this time to sample the delights of Europe's oldest gay bar, Cafe 't Mandje (
read my blog last year for a potted history of this wonderful place). Imagine our delight to have found ourselves in the middle of a genuine, old-fashioned Amsterdam sing-a-long afternoon (complete with songbooks - pointless really, as they are mostly in Dutch).
But my word, did we sing!
We rounded off the most perfect Sunday in our favourite gay bar Cafe Rouge, with its wall-to-wall tacky music policy. In all it was so much fun, and over all too soon! We ate all Dutch food, spent lots of time absorbing the atmosphere of the grachten (canals) - and we only had two thunderstorms, the rest of the time being sunny and warm.
I can't wait to get back again (shame to wait a year for it!).