Bruce Springsteen (The Boss) in Amsterdam

With the recent arrival of a new great nephew in Holland, we found ourselves having to travel to Amsterdam to pay a visit. Now, many of you know that me and kids don’t mix too well (!) so we had to find something else to make the trip worthwhile. What could we do? Oh, Bruce Springsteen is playing in Amsterdam at the end of May – Sorted!

So off we went. We stayed at the Sheraton at Schipol Airport as it’s such a good base (the family live outside Amsterdam and we’ve been into Amsterdam so many times we didn’t need to be in the city). After a lengthy delay we arrived about 10.30pm and headed straight to the hotel bar where we met up again with our favourite barman (Steve, an Englishman from Rotherham who married a Dutch lady and now works at the Sheraton). Lots of banter about football and chat about music (and complimentary top up of drinks!) later, we retired to bed, and next morning got the train to the seaside town of Zandvoort aan Zee. The weather wasn’t exactly beach weather – extremely windy (which did blow the hangover cobwebs well and truly away though!) – but we had an enjoyable few hours sampling Dutch beers and croquettes at the various charming beach cafes there.

Then the moment we had been waiting for and we set off for the Johan Cruijff stadium (home of Ajax football team) for the concert. I’ve been a lifelong fan of The Boss but the last time I saw him live was in 1990, so I was over excited for this. At 73 years of age (now 74) he has not lost his voice or his endless energy, he and the E Street Band are the absolute showmen and they still perform for 3 hours without a break. All the old favourites, as well as some new songs, and all in all it was a legendary performance that I will never ever forget!

So, next day was the family day and we got the train to Haarlem and met up with our niece & nephew in law and baby Matts (surprisingly cute!), sister and brother in law and had a good old family lunch at a lovely old fashioned Dutch restaurant, then brother in law drove us to the airport and our 3 days were sadly up.

Now we're really looking forward to seeing Bruce again next July in Helsinki – I just love making city breaks out of concerts! - it will be our first visit to Finland so another country will be ticked off the list!!