El Rastro

El Rastro is the vast Sunday morning market that sprawls around the streets and squares of La Latina every weekend. Famous for its antique stalls (though in truth you're unlikely to find anything exceptional) it also sells pretty much everything else, with several side streets seeming to specialize - pet paraphernalia, watches, flowers and so on - with the bulk of the stalls on the heaving main street dealing in cheap clothing.

It's a quite a tourist attraction, as you might imagine, though the foreigners were easily outnumbered by locals hunting for a bargain amid the jumbled second hand clothes stores or sipping canas under the shade of a tree.


The market also seemed to attract - if not demand - a far higher quality of busker than normal. We enjoyed the music of (in order) a rather excellent hurdy-gurdy player, a Chinese Chinese violinst (i.e. both the player and instrument were Chinese) and an excellent circus band with a rather marvellous line in jaunty tunes and facial hair. We tipped all of the above.

We made a couple of purchases - some summer trousers for me and a gorgeous red dress for Kate - I think you'll agree she looks quite stunning.

So, no change there then!

Doing The 'Dam

The charm of Amsterdam surely lies in its tangle of the highbrow, the lowbrow, the beautiful, the classy, the tacky and the downright sleazy. Within a few minutes walk, peaceful, picturesque canals lined with specialist shops, boutiques and cafes give way to coffee-shops redolent with the heavy scent of skunk weed and pink-lit windows full of posing, partially-clad prostitutes. A stroll through the flower market and the stalls selling antiquarian and second-hand books can, with one turn, lead to shops selling sex-toys or magic mushrooms and streets lined with porn picture palaces and theatres advertising banana shows. Even though I had a reasonable idea of what to expect, the blatant display of wares which are banned in other countries fairly takes the breath away.

But aside from its unshockability, probably the most alluring aspect to Amsterdam is its ambience. The laid-back approach that matches the gentle pace adopted by the city's countless cyclists as they pedal at joggers' speed through the streets, often chatting into their mobile handsets as they go. People smile tolerantly at the spontaneous outbreaks of group singing accompanying the gaggles of merry-makers and the tables of canalside cafes are full of people gossiping and giggling over cups of coffee or glasses of beer - tourists and residents alike. As a visitor, you aren't made to feel like a necessary evil ripe for a rip-off, but genuinely welcome with smiles and courtesy abounding. Although the endless stream of raucous hen and stag parties heady with intoxication and titillation must wear thin to Amsterdam locals, time and time again I overheard them showing around their out of town and foreign friends, describing their city in tones of pride - window hookers and dope-purveying coffee shops included.

One piece of graffiti we saw as we climbed up to the overpass towards Camping Zeeburg asked, "Why can't everywhere be more like Amsterdam?"
It's tempting to agree.

For the record, we did visit one of the coffee-shops, which provided a novel setting for yet another backgammon session. We chortled over the window displays of a couple of sex shops and read with interest the menu in a Smart Shop, but turned down the opportunity to experiment with hallucinogenic varieties of fungi. We admired the undulations of the red light girls through the glass, but passed by and likewise declined to enter any of the establishments offering live sex shows, although we're told up to a third of the audience at the classier venues tends to be women.

In case you're interested, a spliff rolled with organic hashish or pollen costs from €3.50, a dose of Mexican mushrooms (the mildest type) will set you back around €12, a live sex show costs around €30 (including a free drink), oral favours or a quickie is €30 and a basic session with one of the hookers is €50 for 15 minutes. If you want to know the price of a gramme of weed, you can always ask the city's mayor.

Hubble Bubble

My Mum occasionally claims to be a witch. Not the Wiccan, earth-energy crystals and incantations type. More the fortune-telling, randomly clairvoyant variety. She was recently asked to do a reading of Lady Macbeth at an event marking Shakespeare's birth and death on April 23rd. By all accounts, it was a bravura performance, but I reckon she would have also gone down a storm doing a bit of "Double, double, toil and trouble..." An opinion formed by the unexpected appearance (in a big cauldron, fittingly) of soup which looked like it was made of frog-spawn. Actually, the initially unsettling ingredient was tapioca, or "perles Japons", as the French rather romantically call it. I'd only ever had tapioca as a sweet milk pudding and had certainly never considered it as something to chuck in with the broth, but actually it was delicious, once you got used to the odd texture.

Then there was the small matter of the bat. Theo and I had just retired to our bedroom for a siesta, afternoon constitutional or spot of honeymooning (choose your favourite euphemism) when interruptus in the form of a bat diving through the almost-closed shutters of the window sent me disapearing under the bedclothes and Theo crouching down on the floor to avoid the creature's madly flapping aerobatics (ahem). It's not that either of us are scared of bats, but it's not exactly fun being trapped in a confined space with a small mammal quite beside itself with panic. Thankfully after a minute or two, it found its own way back through the window and Theo and I were able to recommence our preferred method of shaking the shutters.

Finally, I feel I should mention something about French markets. They are fantastic places, a cornucopia of freshly produced food, crafts and plants and flowers. Even the more modest ones put the best English farmers' markets to shame. But they aren't for the faint-hearted. Buying from them involves a bit of confidence in spoken French and a certain amount of strength of will to resist the hawkers' sales patter. But toughest of all is avoiding being run down or otherwise bashed by the shopping trolleys being pushed or pulled from stall to stall by les anciens. Multi-coloured, tall canvas bags on a frame and wheels which they wield like weapons. It's pretty effective too. I soon learned not to stand in the path of an elderly woman hell-bent on buying her demi-kilo of champignons - if those things get dragged into your ankles, you soon know about it. There was an especially impressive array of trolley-wielding pensioners at the Saturday market in Cahors, where Theo and I went to buy 46 artichokes among other things for the huge banquet Mum had planned for our French wedding fete on Sunday. Frog spawn, however, was not on the menu.