April 29
I started the day by biking to the
Museumplein. A cloudy morning, it looked like a good time to revisit the
Rijksmuseum. Only it is closed today. The queen has taken it over for a dinner
this evening.
I bet it’s big enough that they could
have the cafeteria, and we would stay in the other wing and neither of us would
know the other is in the building.
But this is Queen’s Night, the last
Queen’s Night, and tomorrow is Queen’s Day. She’s the queen and she can do what
she wants, especially this week.
Apparently the people love her. There
are crowds standing around the palace. I was there around 5 or so, and the
guards were opening the gate to let a car in.
The policemen are being polite,
but insisting that I move my bicycle, and I’m trying to find a place for it in
the crowd. Meanwhile, there is a Mercedes waiting with an admiral or something in it.
The officer got out of the car with a
briefcase and then came back with help, a lady officer. Together, they took
four metal suitcases out of the trunk. This could be high-level secret
documents, or a payoff. Maybe it was a stunt to give the crowd something to
watch.
Earlier in the day, after I left the museum, I wandered in
the area known as Jordaan, on the upper west side. I saw that the Bloemgracht
runs there, and remembered Bloemstraat, which runs parallel to the canal. Maybe
the best space cake in the world is sold in Paradox, a shop on one of the
streets that crosses Bloemstraat.
I had to make a couple of passes
through the neighborhood, but I found it. I bought the house specialty. It’s a
thin, moist slice of pound cake double-wrapped in plastic and trim enough that
I can fit two in my breast pocket behind my pocket square.
The label says they contain more
than a gram of active ingredient. The cake that knocked me out the other day
had maybe half a gram in it. So as the thief tells Conan: “Chew slowly. This is
the good stuff.”
I came back to the old city and found
new curiosities there: Old New Street, for instance, and a sign with a happy
peeing stick figure and an arrow pointing toward the next urinoir.
I had a sandwich and a mediocre Irish
red at a pub somewhere, and followed that with a third of a piece of Paradox space
cake.
Then I decided to explore parts of the
city outside Centrum. I wound up in the section of the city called De Pijp,
south of Singelgracht. The Pipe is considerably newer—maybe 19th and 20th
century—than Centrum. There is a neighborhood of housing projects, rentals
apparently. One section consists of uniform one-story flats running down both
sides of Diamantstraat.
It was Queen's Night so lots of places
were packed. I ran into Larry at Barney’s Uptown, where I had nothing more
potent than an espresso. I’m still feeling the effects of a cold, allergy, or
something, so I’m tiring out sooner than usual.
We went to a Mexican place not far from
the Hemp, but there was a wait just to eat at the bar.
We wound up at a Suriname place in De
Pijp. I expected it to be hot and spicy, but it wasn’t. I had a dish of white
rice with various samples of pork and chicken. It included slices of a slightly
sweet Chinese style sausage that I have had before. Everything was savory and
delicious, like comfort food.
It was pushing 10 and I was already
wearing down, so there was no way I was going to make it to the Hemp. We stopped for
a Brand UP at a bar on Utrechtsestraat. Larry took off for the Hemp, and I
headed to the Herengracht to follow it back to the neighborhood of the hotel.
All over town there were parties on
corners. People were packed standing-room-only in canal boats. There were bands
playing or DJs losing their hearing.
This boat has an Irish flag. Maybe it is a delegation of Irish dignitaries in for the coronation. I call it, “Are We Having Fun Yet?”
The most surprising thing to me about boats like this is that none of the drunks seem to fall into the water. At least, I haven’t seen or heard of anyone doing that.
It is like New Year’s Eve in the
States—eerie because everything is manic with an underlying sense of
desperation: Oh dear God, please let me have a good time. These are the parties
I stay away from.
But I made it back to the Season Star,
tucked my bike into the little courtyard out back, and tucked myself in.
April 30
This is really exciting. Harry, you’re
witnessing history!
Beatrice
April 30
Nice—history being made—hey you
might've seen this:
Ditch the King. Hire an Actor.
Karl
No comments:
Post a Comment