Down & Out ~My Night with Slowhand

Have you ever been with someone and you know instantly you’re in the presence of someone special? You get tingles all over your body and sometimes the hair on the back of your neck will, as they say, stand up. Well… that’s what my night with Eric Clapton was like.

My husband and I skipped across the pond from Amsterdam to London for a weekend to see Eric Clapton live in concert.  London is by far one of my favorite cities in Europe. First of all.. they speak English, the signs are in English, I understand the English and did I mention.. it’s all in English? Second.. London is the essence of Cool! It seems like everywhere you turn there’s something fun to see. But for the concert would be held at the Royal Albert Hall and that was just the icing on the cake.

Our flight arrived mid afternoon. We had just enough time to change and head across the street from our hotel right in Paddington Station to have a bite to eat before the concert.

I’m always ever so grateful to the British for putting signs on the ground on which way you should look before stepping into traffic.

We arrived at the Royal Albert Hall in time to purchase a few goodies and find our seats. My husband had purchased the tickets on line right as they went on sale. As the concert got closer and closer we only worried a tad that the tickets were fake. Gentle e mail reminders kept informing us that we would receive them in the mail before the concert. The week before the concert, we received an e mail saying that our tickets were over booked. Ummmm how is that possible? But the company assured us that they were working very hard to clear up the matter and we would have tickets. They would deliver our tickets to the hotel. And when we arrived.. yes they were there. And the seats were better than we had purchased. NICE!

 "Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"

 The Royal Albert Hall was opened in 1871 by Queen Victoria and is absolutely stunning!

After a nice warm up guitarist, a man in a blue short sleeved Polo shirt, well-worn jeans and a pair of cumfy Sperry’s came on stage. The background music started as someone handed him a guitar. He easily let his hands bring the guitar to life and the place came alive.

Eric Clapton played for three hours straight. There were no wardrobe changes and he never leapt off the stage. Just a man and his guitar... it was perfect!

My Waltz with the Waffle Man

My life here in The Netherlands has become dramatically better with in the last week. Our grocery store C1000 has been sold to a competitor named Jumbo (the J is pronounced like a Y.. just like my last name). It’s a beautiful new market perfectly close to my house. I just bought saddle bags for my bike so I plan to bike to the market to get most of my food. I’ll just have to go more often which is what the Dutch like to do.

As I arrived at our new store ready to explore what new items they were stocking I was greeted by a friendly Jumbo greeter with a magic wand in her hand that she handed to me. It was yellow and shiny and oh so much fun! As I glided around my new store with my pointing, scanning and bagging my goodies all by myself… elation took over my body. I was giddy with delight of having so much power. I would no longer have to avoid eye contact with the other people in line who held a loaf of bread while I checked out my weeks’ worth of groceries, I would no longer have to avoid their glares as I slammed all of my food into bags at the speed of light, over packing and smooshing my bread and eggs in the process.

I would now have the freedom to shop leisurely, scan the price and place it immediately into my bag in the place that worked best for that item. As I turned a corner, my eyes caught a glimpse of a man and a cart. There was music coming from his music/boom box cart. And on the top he was making waffles.  This jolly ole fellow with his tall baker cap was in such a wonderful mood. He was tapping his foot to the music and I smiled as I watched him. What a joy to enjoy your job so much you wanted to dance and smile all day long.

Here’s a little music to help put you in the mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD_uz_kBS1E

Well, he saw me standing there smiling and watching and he reached out to grab my hand. He circled me around and around the Jumbo market all while I laughed and giggled with delight at my new found favorite grocery store.

I checked out within seconds. All I had to do was hand my yellow shiny toy back to the cashier and pay. It was all very painless.

Dancing with the Waffle Man while doing a little shopping ~ pure joy!!

I’ll Have Some Mora Vilamoura!

The Dutch or Europe for that matter have living away from work figured out. People around the world seem to get so caught up in the everyday grind of working that sometimes, they forget to live. With today’s technology it is truly difficult to not be connected with your work even when you are on vacation, or as Europe calls it Holiday.

The school holiday schedule is different from the States. There’s a long stretch between fall break and Christmas break. For some reason, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. I find this truly sad as who doesn't want to give thanks by eating way too much food and watching football all day. That would be American football by the way. But in The Netherlands in the spring there seems to be holiday after holiday. So when given two weeks for spring break, we knew we wanted to actually get away from the daily grind. Laptops and cells phones clenched to our hands we took off for a glorious week in Portugal.

Several years ago, my husband and I made one of the best decisions of our lives.  For years we attended the free seminars from various vacation time shares in order to get a free night stay or free prize. We usually only had to give up one hour and listen to some boring person describe how life would be so much better if we bought a time share. So after paying off our college loans and other life choices we made the plunge to purchase a time share. We were already taking time every year to travel with friends in the states so we looked at this as an investment. And this would be one we would never look back on and regret. And with moving to Europe we were ready to explore an area we never thought we would be going to… Portugal.

Not only does Europe have giving their people time off from work to rest and enjoy life, they also know part of that enjoyment is making it affordable. Getting to Portugal from the States would be a serious amount of cha ching, but flying with in the European Union is usually affordable.

We flew into Faro in southern Portugal and then took a 30 minute cab ride to our time share in Vilamoura. Taking in the beautiful scenery I couldn’t help but shut my eyes and lift my head up to soak in the sun. This American girl who has lived most of her life in Texas has missed the sun! I grew up in Michigan but somehow had blocked winters, lack of sunshine and cold and had traded them for the memories I had gathered as an adult… summer vacations and sunshine. Over the years as I talked to my friends they would describe how cold they were or depressed because they missed the sun. I’d sympathetically listen as I’d sip coffee from my patio enjoying the Texas sun. But in The Netherlands people flock outside at the slightest showing of the sun. Something I found funny at first but after this past winter… not so funny. It’s definitely true… the sun helps to lift your spirits.

We were traveling with good friends and really looking forward to a relaxing week of sun, swimming, games and much more. Here are a few of our favorite moments.

  

To our friends The Pulliam’s~ Thank you so much for a wonderful week we will never forget. We’ll go “Off Grid” with you anytime!

What American's Really Look and Act like!

For all those Dutch that think we (American’s) wear our pants way up high and walk real goofy… here ya go… this is what we’re really like. Anything for a free tank of gas! Short post but oh so funny!!! I LOVE America!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_bbt0_XjbQ

Would I do this for a free tank of gas? Absolutely!

Singing my way through life J