Navigating Amsterdam

Cam and I just got back from Café Alto, the jazz club just down the street from our hotel.  I wanted to go there when we arrived in Amsterdam on September 17th but the night we tried to get in it was jam-packed.  It would have been futile to even try.  We skipped.

Cam suggested that we go tonight because he remembered my reason for wanting to see the place; it's a club that Janet and I went to in 1997, and where we heard some pretty good jazz.  I'm pleased to report that time hasn't diminished the Alto legend, at least as I've constructed it in my mind.  The quartet -- guitar, electric bass, drums and keyboards -- were good together.  As I like to do, several times I closed my eyes and isolated on each instrument in turn.  They were good individually as well as together.

Alto is a small place.  The bar is on the right as you enter.  Across from it is a row of stools against small shelf, just wide enough to hold a glass.  Beyond that, toward the rear, two steps lead to an area of about ten tables and enough seats for maybe forty or fifty people.

We got there early and had snagged two stools along the wall with a good view of the stage, which was in ..  which was .. the back of the room.  At opening time, 9:00 PM, there was no sign of the band and not that many people.  We had an Amstel, then another, and while we did the musicians began to show up.  First was the drummer, then the keyboardist, the bassist and the guitar man.  Once they had their instruments out, completed an extended sound check, and it got to be ten o'clock they began to play.  We listened and enjoyed, although the sound of conversations coming from behind us and in the foreground interfered some with being really able to listen as I would have liked.

We left at the band's first break and came back to the hotel to rest up from a day of much walking, a visit to the Van Gogh museum, and a late day stop for coffee and dessert.

Cam's kind of tired from the bike tour that he took yesterday afternoon.  It was, he reported, interesting and educational.  The "hippie" girl, as he described her, knew a lot of historical and contemporary facts about Amsterdam and pointed out places that most casual tourists might not have recognized.  His trip helped us to find our way to places today.  Cam's turned out to be a pretty good navigator.  (Did I say that before?  Can't remember if it was here or on Facebook.)