Jacqueline Govaert in Groningen

This weekend we headed to Groningen in the north of Netherlands. It was the first time for me to head this north in the country. Once we left the Randstad, the area which consists of the 4 largest cities of the Netherlands and makes up around ²/₃ of the whole Dutch population, the countryside changed to vast expanses of green. Green dispersed with large amounts of water. This area called Flevoland didn't even exist until the sixties. The Dutch are well known for reclaming land and this was one of the reasons they are famous for having most of the country below sea level!

The reason we headed to Groningen was to go for Jacqueline Govaert's concert. The concert was at a small location, much smaller than Paradiso in Amsterdam. The atmosphere was great since we were really near the stage and it felt like we were really part of the show. The concert was to promote her first solo album since she left the band Krezip. I had discovered Jacqueline just before Krezip stopped playing together and was sad that I never managed to go to their concert seeing that they were local! So once the Good Life album came out I was ecstatic.

Just after Jacqueline came on stage I thought she hadn't lost the baby weight yet of her first kid but then I noticed that she was pregnant. Now I think pregnant women are nice and are usually very radiant, however I don't think it looks very nice on stage when the mother is prancing and jumping around. It just feels wrong!

All in all we had a great time up north.

[Image Credits: Vera]

Royal Beach Concert

When you live in Amsterdam, all your activities happen in Amsterdam. It’s only on rare occasions that you leave the city. Since I moved to The Hague I started noticing that there are quite a number of things/activities happening in other parts of the country. Such was the case a couple of weeks ago when we headed to the Scheveningen beach for the Royal Beach Concert. The concert had several local Haags (Dutch) bands and singers but the main attraction for the day was Jon Bon Jovi and his band.

I knew about Bon Jovi since I was a young kid and never really expected to get to see him performing live, so once I discovered he was performing so close to home we decided to go and see him.  He played for 2 hours and you could hear all the ladies hear throb when he was singing songs like Bed of Roses , Always and Bad Medicine. I remember dancing at Gianpula in Malta to their It’s My Life song on warm summer nights.  Jon Bon Jovi definitely keeps his nearly 50 years well; it was quite an eye candy seeing him dance around the stage in his tight leather trousers.

In the morning before heading to the beach we maturely thought that we will need sun protection cream. Luckily we did get some since it was very warm. Random people weren’t as thoughtful as us and were asking us if we could give them some lotion since they were getting burned. We were happy to help but I’m sure some of them were still in pain in the evening, seeing that they were a lobster colour of red already.

The lead singer of Kane can be seen in the below photo.

Many boats heard the concert for free!

This was definitely a lovely and different day at the beach.

Alicia Keys concert

A few weeks ago we went to a concert of Alicia Keys for my belated birthday present. Her concert was a mix of up-beat songs as well as calmer songs which she played directly on the piano. One of her songs in her third album Unpluggedis Streets of New York has a special meaning to me and my boyfriend since it became popular just before we went to New York. Each time I heard it I imagined our trip and after the holiday I relived the memories of a very wet weekend in New York with local Maltese friends. The weekend we spent in New York was definitely one of the wettest weekends this year, I doubt there was another weekend in which a flood warning was released in all the New York state. Luckily friends took us out to one of their favourite bars (Tonic) which I had heard about several times!

Her voice is astounding and I would suggest you to try and see her live.

The video shows part of the song Streets of New York. The out-of-tune voice you hear in the background is my darling boyfriend's!