Amsterdam did have a flurry of snow overnight so I took the concierge’s advice and caught the tram to Museumplein for my art morning, Transport was easy to navigate, trains are informative so you know where you are. One thing I noticed with taxi driver, waiters, hotel staff and the tram employees was that they are Dutch. As one used only to being served or driven by east Europeans, this came as quite a shock and was continued throughout my stay. Are such jobs better paid here by comparison or as in Spain just treated with greater respect? Proper jobs perhaps?
I think it was probably more than 30 years ago that I was in the Rijksmuseum and rather like the BM and V&A they have built a great glass canopy over the courtyard which makes for a more pleasant and warmer experience. And what a delightful museum it is. Paintings displayed with space to view them. Only a few cases where you have to crick your neck to look at images high on their walls. Which incidentally I did in the concert last night – the stage in Concert Gebouw is very high and I thought I may have been better off with a seat in the balcony rather than the stalls.
I’ve seen reproductions of the Night Watch before but it does take your breath away with the staggering amount of narrative detail Rembrandt included. There’s a brilliant printed guide in the gallery that points out the most salient aspects – I would not have spotted them all without. There are several brilliant other Rembrandt’s and a series of gorgeous but surprisingly small Vermeers. The galleries are well supplied with benches from which to sit and contemplate and although it was getting busier as I left around two o’clock, it had been a very pleasurable visit. No eye-glazing and a handy highlights leaflet to save you looking at absolutely every Dutch landscape which – heresy – can start to look a little samey and as we’re in the Netherlands dare I say flat.
Just along from the museum is Amsterdam’s famous Vondelpark so I went for a stroll there with loads more skaters on the lakes including an impromptu ice hockey game, joggers on the pathways and cycles ridden it seemed by Michelin men and women – puffa jackets seem de rigeur. Leidseplein is the tourist epicentre for bars, restaurants and clubs so it was now time for a beer and a snack. I found a good traditional bar Reynders and after refuelling I walked back to the centre. On the way I had a very reassuring phone call from my neighbour John who had heard me coughing in the night earlier in the week, noticed that the window shutters were closed and called to check that I was alive and well. Aren’t neighbours just wonderful?
It was a great route crossing all the big central canals and finishing up in Dam Square. From there it was a further kilometre or so to Central Station and then along the Ij to reach Bimhuis a magnificent music venue built about ten years ago where I was due to meet my friend Alan Skidmore for the sound check before their concert that evening. It was quite fun arriving across a angled bridge over the canal up to the empty venue and being escorted from reception to the green room with the greeting “You must be Mike”, They knew I was coming, had they baked a cake? Well no but there was beer in the fridge and an unbelievably warm reception for a random Brit who just happens to be Skid’s mate and webmaster. Despite being an ace saxophonist, Skid’s a drummer manqué and got a chance to sit at the kit in the sound check.
While waiting for crew dinner, I bought my own by the way from an excellent menu in the Bimhuis café, we discovered an advertisement in a magazine for the Skidmore Jazz Institue so this deserves further investigation and maybe some royalty payments. I have to say that I’ve always found jazz musicians a friendly bunch and these were no exception. Jokes were told – which many had heard often before no doubt – but were well received. Then it was time to leave the backstage and get up to the venue again.
The gig was an absolutely stormer. A superb Dutch rhythm section who have played with all the jazz greats on tours in Europe really got things swinging and then the front line of Skid who doesn’t know the meaning of giving less than everything even though he’ll be knackered next day, Benjamin who is English but lives in Holland and is applying for a passport with some speed and plays a mean solo and the rose between the (t)horns Tineke Postma who was an absolute revelation to me. Where does all that power, lyricism and invention come from? There were two sets which were rapturously received by the full house. John Coltrane’s Impressions was the closing number and he would have been nodding his approval had he been here.
Then it’s back to the green room for more beer and wine and try to chill a bit while adrenaline levels are raging. I then help the guys down to the basement car park with their gear as they set off for a hotel near Utrecht ready for tomorrow’s gig. I then try to find my way out of the nearly deserted building into the very cold night air. Fortunately I was able to flag down a cab before too long. They didn’t play Round Midnight but that had long gone so walking back to the hotel was not really on tonight.
After a pleasant stroll, well wrapped up against the minus 8 according to my phone, it was time for a pause in the journey for a beer. A fine old cafe Mulder presented itself on my route and it seemed rude to refuse. Wooden bar and tables and a good old-fashioned atmosphere with a selection of drought and bottled beers – just what was required. I soon after arrived outside the imposing Rijksmuseum which was on the agenda for tomorrow. 
Across the park behind it was the concert hall for which I had tickets for 8.15 pm in an hour and a half. Perfect time to find another bar and have a pre-concert snack. Again I was lucky to find a table in a very popular place Gruter – it was reserved from 7.30 but I promised to be gone by then. It was very lively and I struck up a conversation with a couple from just outside Utrecht who were flat sitting while their daughter was off skiing. They said I’d done well to find the bar as it’s reckoned to be one of the hidden gems.
So I had a little moment and resumed my journey on a packed tram. I had time to raise a glass to her in the Piazza del Popolo and found another birra artiginale this time from brewery Beatrice with a pale ale called Diana – all very British royal family! With some complimentary crisps and nuts I was ready for the last leg. I had done very well using metro, trams and a bus and decided to treat myself to a luxury ride to the airport in the hotel’s shuttle bus which proved a good plan as we arrived in good time and I was able to find a seat and write a previous blog.
As you enter the site you walk past ‘Venusia’ a prop used at the beginning of Fellini’s Casanova. Once through the gate we walk along a rough a roadway lined by large terracotta painted buildings each with a Teatro number. Teatro is the Italian equivalent of Stage in English film studio parlance and our first stop, as I try out my new umbrella, is outside Teatro 5 one of 22 in all. I already knew this was their biggest with two submerged tanks for underwater and water surface filming and a massively high ceiling for crane shots. I had also read that Fellini (a favourite from my 1960s film-going days along with Pasolini and Antonioni) held it as his favourite space. I asked whether they had shot the famous scene in La Dolce Vita here in which Anita Ekberg inveigles Marcello Mastroianni to join her in the iconic Trevi Fountain. They hadn’t. It was apparently shot at 05:30 in February with Mastrioanni demanding a wet suit under his tuxedo while Nordic ice-queen Ekberg strolled through the waters, shoulders bare, in her evening gown. There’s a brass plaque on the wall outside Teatro 5 dedicating it to Fellini who did in fact recreate whole streets in the studio for this and the many other films he made here.
Next to it they are just starting to build an outdoor set for a new film version of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose which we weren’t allowed to approach – secrecy or construction hazard I’m not sure. We then move to Assissi built for a film about St Francis but since much adapted to be Florence and other towns in medieval times.
The entrance area also has a brilliant children’s play area made up from the letters of Cinecitta.All in all a fascinating morning and I was very glad I’d caught up with the guide.
I found an old UK pound coin in my camera bag and rather than take it to a bank I cast it to the waters. I hope it’s valid for Roman myths.
On into Santa Agnesa in Agone right opposite Bernini’s famous Four Rivers Fountain which represents the Danube, the Nile, the Plate and the Ganges with mythical creatures and is topped by a huge obelisk. One of the characters is holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the light but popular Roman tales have it that Bernini had this man shield his eyes from the awful facade of the church built by his greatest rival Borromini. Great story, not true – the church came fifteen years after the fountain but hey – it’s a fun way of explaining the rivalry between the established master and the young pretender both eager to attract sponsorship from popes, princes and patrons.
I walked back from the concert past the Trevi fountain and flung in some euros just in case my invalid pound bars me from returning. I looked at several restaurants and was attracted by the option of Ristorante Rossini – what a musical contrast! It proved a good choice with a starter of sauted clams which I’d never seen before. They were in fact steamed like mussels in a white wine and parsley sauce and very tasty. It was also a nod to Dee whose favourite pasta was spaghetti alle vongole. My second course (and last – I’m not Italian) was a delicious lasagne in which the pasta sheets were paper thin and the meat and tomato ragu a little spicy and just what I needed. I was frowned at a little for declining my main course but explained that as an oldie I don’t get as hungry as I used to – thank you Google translate!
There is a mixture of installations, archictects’ drawings and models, which I’ve always loved whether in balsa wood or Perspex, photography including a magic Helmut Newton series of Rome and a special exhibition of art from war torn Beirut. I spent a very stimulating 90 minutes and could have explored other areas but wanted to see the work of another superstar architect Renzo Piano.
Highlights for me were the map room in which you can walk from south to north of Italy in five minutes with brilliant relief representations of the various areas of the country either side of you as they were thought to be in 1580. As a geographer, Dee would have taken some persuading to move on but Tatiana was strict and we were ushered on towards the Raphael frescoes. These are quite wonderful except for one which I think was the Expulsion of Heliodorus where most of the wall is in his usual style but the a handful of figures in the lower left side are much more dramatic, muscular and frankly Vincian. Tatiana told us, the probable urban, myth that Raphael stole the key to the Sistine Chapel and had a sneak preview and decided to copy the master. While beautifully done he really should have stripped off the plaster and started over for consistency.
These bronze doors – apparently one of only three that weren’t melted down at some stage are high above the level we are now walking at.
I walked through Piazza Navona passsing more Bernini fountains – I especially liked his elephant supporting an obelisk on its howdah. – and I pass the church where I have a concert on Thursday night and on up the Tiber to the Ara Pacis museum. This had not been on my original agenda but I’m easily diverted. This is a glass box built recently to house the Altar of Peace of Augustus which was consecrated in 9 BC after Augustus had conquered France and Spain and people and animals had to be sacrificed to celebrate. It was buried under silt until 1939 and is in remarkable condition and a very beautiful structure despite its deadly purpose.
I then went back to the metro and went to Spagna to see the Spanish steps and have my first proper coffee – 95 cents for a good shot of strong espresso. Excellent preparation for the day ahead. In my trip schedule I had nothing booked for today and decided to discover Rome on foot. It was after all as I told too many people clear, blue, sunny and 14 degrees. Ideal for a stroll. I made my higgledy piggeldy way to the Tiber and crossed into trendy Trastevere where there are book stalls and bad art lining the river promenade.
Her knowledge of and love for the city spurred on my feet as I wandered further down the river swapping banks by the huge Castel San Angelo and on down the left bank to the Jewish quarter, through to the Capitoline Hill with the huge Victor Emanuele vanity project (I was told off by the guide the next day – it was not just for him but to commemorate the reunification of Italy – right) which caused great controversy among Romans at the time. It destroyed a whole medieval neighbourhood, took loads of taxpayers money and was derided as ‘the wedding cake ’, ‘the false teeth’ and ‘the typewriter’. The massive equestrian statues confirm it as a vanity project for me. Beyond it I strolled along to get a first sight of the Forum and the Colosseum due for a guided tour tomorrow. This route was along wide boulevard created when Mussolini order a whole medieval neighbourhood to be bulldozed for this prestige route – HS2 sound familiar?
On the football theme I was pleased to see this bus parked near the entrance to the hotel. Well Graham Taylor did get Watford into Europe and maybe we’ll need another Eurobus one of these days and we can dedicate it to his memory.
It was a splendid warm week with a few visits to the pool purely to stimulate the thought processes of course. I sat diligently in writer’s corner in the shade and have achieved what I hoped for – enough written down that it has its own momentum now and writing a chapter now and then among other commitments will be OK. If any of it is any good that is,
I left the house and set off eastwards along the A92 autovia, pausing for breakfast near Granada with a fine view of the Sierra Nevada, still living up to their name. I came off at a junction signed Huercal-Overa, the town nearest to my tree but SatNav was not happy as we did some N roads with a few trucks making progress a little slower. I soon arrived and found the original San Francisco deep in the heart of Almeria. We had agreed I’d find my way to 
They’ve made a brilliant fist of sorting the place out and have achieved coveted status as first cold press virgin olive oil with International Olive Council approval which means a lot of tasting by people in Jaen, the capital of olive oil – one might say the Vatican of olive oil such is the mystery that surrounds it. Oh and it’s pretty tasty too like less fatty butter with added sunshine. And of course you’ll live longer.
Thursday brought an absolute downpour and the forecast for Friday was dodgy so I sent a message asking if they want to postpone but we decided to risk it anyway. So I set off in blinding rain with the wipers the only things going fast along the windy road through Villanueva de Algaidas to reach the A45 autovia to Cordoba. All was well and I made it to the very modern station with a huge plaza in front of it in good time. But it seems there’s no short-stay, pick up and drop off parking. However two cars were waiting in a slip road in front of the station which had bollards to stop you entering from the obvious direction. No one seemed to be about so I failed to see a No Entry sign, went in did a three-point turn and was ready to receive Natalie and Graham when their train arrived just five minutes late.
To the south, the banks of the Quadalquivir have been opened up and developed and we took the opportunity of a sunny spell to walk across the Roman bridge, even earlier than the mosque dating from the first century BC and rather spoilt by some later concrete balustrades. Time for a visit to a favourite which Natalie had recommended to Dee and me on our visit in 2010 
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