Tulips...

Tulips...

...from Amsterdam.

Day two of the Brennan road trip.

I forgot to bring the b*****t deflectors!  So my ears are hurting now from Grandads terrible jokes.  I won't tell you any of them, I wouldn't inflict the same pain on you.

We're on the road back to Amsterdam, having spent the night in Maastricht.  Our visit to Maastricht was to bring my parents to see the well oiled machine that is Andre Rieu.  And what a machine it is! He is the 'One Direction' of classical music.  We enjoyed, as the man himself would say, a 'fantastic' evening.  As I am sure any of you who are familiar with what he does knows, he tours the world with this show, so you get exactly as it says on the tin.  It's like the Disney fairy tale for adults.  Mam and Dad really enjoyed the show, as did I and Deirdre and Vincent, despite a drop of rain towards the end, when we all donned the plastic ponchos kindly provided by Andre.  Dad was so delighted with the whole experience that he wrote a poem in Andre's honour:

When Andre Rieu was a young boy

He couldn't play a note.

So, he bought a fiddle with a hole in the middle,

To keep his show afloat!

I can't add to that!   But I can add that Dad mentioned that myself and Deirdre brought the average age of the audience down considerably.  So that makes up for his terrible poetry.  Unless of course, that was another of his terrible jokes...

And can I just say, Maastricht is Andre's home town and he is playing live shows in the Vrijthof Square in the town for two weeks.  That's 14 nights in a row.  No licensing issues here.  The square is surrounded by residential properties.  Nobody objected!  Quite the opposite in fact they open their windows and sit on the sills watching and listening, enjoying the fireworks that close the show.  And this event takes place every year.  People of Drumcondra, are you reading this?  We Irish have a lot to learn.   (And I wrote that paragraph without mentioning Garth Brooks once!  Oh wait...)

So we are on route now to Amsterdam for a few days.  Making a stop off in Hoorn, to visit some extended family on the Fahey (deirdre's husband) side.  I was in Hoorn once before in a former life.  I don't remember much about it but I do have an old photo of myself on a bike to prove that I was there.  I might try to recreate that image today.  I wonder do they still have the same bike?

There's a game of Scrabble going on in the back of the car as I'm writing.  Somebody has invoked a three kilometre rule.  You have to play your turn before three kilometres have been driven.  Jeez! There's always some new rule that has to be adhered to.  I better stop writing and take my turn, or I'll be banished from the game, not that I have much of winning...

The Stewart on the flight on the way over told me to make sure I kept my parents away from the 'cake' shops in Amsterdam.   Hmmm..  You know when somebody tells you not to do something...