Monday 20 March 5 am! Is this wise? Wearily into the shower, check small suitcase and lock up the house and set off to catch the 05:59 from Lee to London Bridge and thence to St Pancras. On arrival I’m just about to WhatsApp ‘I’m here’ when Frances appears beside me. We then move to the Eurostar check in line. This ridiculous hour is because they suggest you check in 90 minutes before the scheduled departure – in our case 08:16. The check in process is simple with the exception that I have to go through the scanner twice because it detected my house keys in my jeans pocket – but not my trusty Swiss Army knife! Security! Fortified with coffee and croissant we board the train and set off for a three day trip to hoover up culture in Amsterdam. This was in response to a random comment by me in the pub before the Reading game on 4 February along the lines of: ‘There’s this once in a lifetime exhibition of 28 of Vermeer’s known 37 paintings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I‘m going. Anyone else?’ After several attempts to sort out mutually acceptable arrangements in transpired that just Fran and I (oh the joys of retirement) were able to make it. So off we go.
The journey was direct to Amsterdam – last time I had to change in Brussels. It takes just about four hours and we arrived in a rather damp Amsterdam Centraal Station a little after one o’clock. Time for a beer rather than taking the tram straight to the hotel. So we set off across the canal down a street towards Dam Square where I have previously found suitable quaffing locations.
Before long – rejecting all the chain places on the main streets we found the delightful Kadinsky (sic -not named after the painter) in Langebrugsteeg just around the corner from Dam Square and the Royal Palace. Affligem Blond was exactly to Fran’s taste and the regular suited me just fine. We accompanied the second with a very tasty ham and cheese toastie. Observing people coming and going from the shop opposite it became clear that this was a cannabis bar – we didn’t partake. Then finally with the rain abating a little we set off to take a tram to the hotel which was south west of the centre near Vondelpark one of the city’s several big open areas. Last time I was here in 2018 I’d seen people skating on one of the lakes in the park.
Like so many other cities, Amsterdam is a complete mess of diggers, holes in the road, muddy pavements and ‘tram stop not in operation’ signs. So we had a bit of a trek to find a stop for the number 17 to Surinamplein which deposited us a five minute walk from the hotel. Only later in the Stedelik Museum did the significance of Suriname become clear. The hotel was part of a Eurostar package but looked OK on the website. Being greeted at the main entrance by chaps carrying plasterboard to to their van wasn’t the best start.
A sign indicated their apologies that the foyer was being refurbished and that the ‘VIP’ entrance (Dutch sense of humour) was round the corner right and right. Easy enough and check in was conducted by a pleasant enough chap. The the challenge began. Take the lift to floor one in this Tower B go through the door and turn left along a safari route all the while admiring the Conscious Hotel Group’s green roof. They are also very eco conscious in every other aspect which was no bad thing. I could even scan a QR code to say ‘Don’t bother to clean my room’ with its promise of environmental benefits and that they would plant a tree. But that was after reaching the room – something still to be achieved. The walkway led to Tower A where another lift took us to the fifth floor and two similar and very clean, neat and pleasant rooms with huge comfortable beds.
We each took a few moments to unpack and sort ourselves out and then went to find an early evening beer as we were due to meet the agent who sends me occasional paid work from the Netherlands for dinner. We hadn’t seen each other for five or six years and Annemarie and her husband Alan were driving up from Utrecht to meet us at Cafe Moer – a vegan joint also owned by the Conscious Hotel. We were on a very long street called Overtoom where there were few open options. It seems a lot of places close for several hours after three o’clock and open again around five or six. Off the main road in a side street we did find a thriving local with a raucous group playing pool, a pair sharing the cares of the world with each other and good beer and free crisps. One elderly gent sitting in a window seat looked enviously at the bowl in front of us, but when we offered him our cheesy waffles they were not to his taste and he demanded – and got – proper crisps from the genial landlady. Just time for one and then back to the hotel to get ready for dinner at 6.30.
Annemarie is Dutch and married to Alan who is from Croydon and a Crystal Palace fan. But neither of us had a lot to say about football given this season for both clubs. We did talk a bit about the work of Watford’s chairty the Community Sports & Eductaion Trust and I promised to try to send them a copy of the book I wrote for the 25th Anniversary which would show them the scope of the charitable work. We had a very lively evening with acceptable if not gourmet, vegan dishes, good beers and a more than passable German red wine which can’t have been too bad as Fran and I did another bottle after Alan and Annemarie had left to get back home to relive her father of their 13-year-old. They were both great company and I refrained from talking too boringly about work! So a first day – rather a long one – came to an end and a good night’s, much needed, sleep ensued.
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.
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.
The route to our next stop the parador at Baiona took us very close to Santiago de Compostela so we couldn’t not go. We passed a few groups of walking pilgrims on the way but I think the preferred routes keep them off the major roads, fume flagellation not being part of the pilgrimage. As we approached the sprawling city we headed for the first car park we saw signs to and found that miraculously, well it is Santiago, it was right by a major intersection from which a gate led us to the centre in about fifteen minutes. However after the drive we needed to pause for a coffee and chose a place near this big junction where coach after coach disgorged its mixtures of pilgrims and day trippers.
We made our way into the old part of the city pausing at several haberdasheries to marvel at the lace, religious memorabilia shops to wonder at the gullibility and how many shapes you can make for a scallop shell, and some art and craft shops whose wares were interesting but not compelling. The cathedral is very impressive and the whole monumental area surrounding it gave a feeling of ancient power. We refrained from joining the queues to see the interior of the cathedral. It was hot, the queue was very long and we agreed some time ago that we didn’t like paying to go into churches.
We covered the immediate hinterland gazing at fine buildings with amazing carvings, wandered down narrow streets and found ourselves at the 
On the corner of the road back to the car was a restaurant called 
Our first impression as we arrived was that we had struck lucky. A beautiful sandy bay with a promenade lined with shops, bars and restaurants, a fishing harbour with a replica of Columbus’s ship Pinta which brought the first news of the New World to Baiona in 1943 – oh dear too used to typing my date of birth – 1493 was when the Pinta sailed in from the Americas. Columbus is starting to play as big a part in these blogs as Murakami – he’s followed us from one end of Spain to the other. At the end of the town was a promontory with the fortress walls surrounding it and the hotel right in the middle at the top. And you had to show your reservation to be allowed to drive through the entrance gateway at the foot – proper posh!
We dined that evening in the less formal restaurant just down from the main parador building called the Enxebre A Pinta as it overlooks the port with the replica ship. Less formal than the main dining room the food was well up to standard and made for a very relaxing last night in Spain – and we got another lovely sunset.
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