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My Somewhat Inappropriate Travel Post. London & Amsterdam

 

The loo in the queue was warm.

And dry.

Outside the loo…12 thousand stood in the queue.

In the (as the Brit’s say) pissing rain.

It’s a Wimbledon tradition.

If you don’t want to buy a ticket, you wait in line for a Grounds Pass.

Tickets can be 8 thousand dollars, a Grounds Pass is 28 dollars.
We’d already spent too much on Springsteen tickets.
So, on a whim, we try the Wimbledon queue.
Brit’s insist it’s fun.
In lieu (not to be confused with the loo) of an umbrella, I had…nothing.
After 4 (fun?) hours on line in the rain…
We get in.
Then it’s all champagne, strawberries & cream, oh & tennis.
There are 18 courts.
We saw Christopher Eubanks win his first match.
6’7″ with a killer serve.
But who knew he’d be the prince of Wimbledon?
We saw the Brit Katie Boulter.
That’s the match where the guy sat on the court and threw confetti to protest the use of fossil fuels.
A Grounds Pass gets you almost everywhere…except Centre Court.
You get nowhere near royalty without a proper ticket.
And we missed Princess Kate by a day anyway.
That night we had dinner at Hakkasan.
A fancy Chinese restaurant.
The people next to us ordered ice cream with caviar that came with a dry ice fog.
We stuck to the wagyu dumplings.
Next morning (ok, afternoon) we slept until noon.
Damn blackout shades (plus jet lag & a few too many pubs).
We got a scone on the way to Hyde Park.
That scone deserves its own paragraph.
Homemade from a tiny cafe called The English Rose.
It’s palace adjacent, and perfect. except for the endless busses.
Damn tourists (oh wait, I am one).
Mr G (for those who don’t know…that’s my husband) and I  join the crowd of  65 thousand in Hyde Park.
65 thousand people, standing room only.
And the guy standing right in front of us…was an old neighbor from Malibu.
Springsteen is a young 73.
He looks 33.
Good genes (or good work).
In jeans and a black shirt (that he ripped open at one point) he sang and danced in the dark for 3 hours.
Music in the park must end by 10:30pm.
When Bruce says it’s time to go….
People yell nooo.
Bruce says…”They’re going to pull the f-ing plug”!
Last time Bruce played Hyde Park he and Sir Paul McCartney played past 10:30pm and they did pull the f-ing plug.
We must be the world’s oldest groupies because the next night  (after stopping for another scone) we & 65k others went back to Hyde Park to see Billy Joel.
The two kids standing in front of us spoke no English.
But knew every lyric.
Billy had a teleprompter hidden in the piano.
But those kids knew the words.
So, two concerts, and I went to church twice.
Day and night.
Evensong is a nightly ritual at Westminster Abbey.
It’s a half hour of prayer and music with the (heavenly) Choir of Westminster Abbey.
And you’ll see dead people.
Over 3000 people are buried in the Abbey.
Many are famous, like Sir Laurence Olivier, Chaucer and Charles Dickens.
And this is where Charles was just crowned King.
Again, I just missed royalty.
William & Kate were at the Abbey the day before me.
Unclear if this counts as a third church visit, but we went to the Mercado Mayfair.
It’s food, wine bars & a brewery in an old church.
The brewery is in the crypt, so more dead people.
The church is near a place of wardrobe worship.
Selfridges has been voted the best department store in the world.
One department had a bouncer and a velvet rope.
You had to wait in line to buy Kim K’s Skims.
We took every trite photo in London & went to Amsterdam.
Two days in Amsterdam & we missed the two reasons people go (the red light district & the pot).
Not sure why LA smells more like pot than Amsterdam.
We saw the Van Gogh museum.
And heard that after he cut off his ear he gave it to a prostitute as a keepsake.
We spent two hours at the Ann Frank House.
Walking through the small rooms where Ann and her family hid.
You see the toilet they couldn’t flush, because they couldn’t make a sound.
They were on the last train that left Amsterdam for Auschwitz.
After two years of hiding, they were found months before the war ended.
No photos allowed in the house.
And no one speaks.
You listen to a talk about Ann.
About how she wanted to be a famous writer.
And, of course, she is.
We took the obligatory canal ride & rode bikes.
There are more bikes than people in Amsterdam.
Thousands of bikes end up in the canals each year.
Some due to the wind.
Some due to people being 3 sheets to the wind.
Holland is the home of Heineken.
About 8 people die every year peeing in the canals.
About 400 people fall in while peeing.
Signs say Wild Peeing (peeing outside) is illegal.
I can’t even pee outside when hiking in the wild.
They have public urinals called Pissours.
And pot plants you can piss in (literally a pot to piss in).
They mix the pee and pot to make fertilizer.
But they are for men.
Ladies must find a loo.
Which brings back memories of the (unattractive, but) warm and dry loo in the queue at Wimbledon.
***
***
Hints
Get to the Wimbledon queue early.
We got there at 9am and were number 10K in line.
Bring an umbrella and a blanket (we brought neither).
Tickets for the Ann Frank house are limited.  Purchase them on line.
Favorite pub in London…all of them.
Favorite pub snack in Amsterdam…cheese sticks (fried cheese) but hated the fried meat snack called Bitterballen.
Favorite restaurants Hakkasan in London & Ron Gastrobar in Amsterdam.

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