Saturday, February 14, 2009

Delft Blues

This weekend Delft is hosting the Delft Blues Festival - a musical play on their fame of blue Delftware. Bars and cafes all over town are hosting solo, duet, and group performances, with free entry. We took this as an opportunity to visit places we might not have frequented otherwise.

We started by celebrating Valentine's day (a day early) with dinner at De Zeven Zonden (The Seven Sins) and music by Bluesinn. The atmosphere was cozy and unique; the dinner was delicious and unique. The restaurant was filled with these wonderful custom made light fixtures, in fact most of Europe is filled with wonderful custom made light fixtures.

I opted for the special Bluesmenu and was not disappointed. My dinner started with a kangaroo carpaccio with a mango sauce; I wonder if they import the kangaroo steaks or if there is a kangaroo farm somewhere in the Netherlands. Regardless, the carpaccio was wonderful - it almost made me wish Matt had ordered the kangaroo steak for dinner. But neither of us were disappointed when we got our dinners, completed with the perfect roasted potatoes. Here in the Netherlands, they put bowls of potatoes on your table just like an Italian restaurant would put bread on your table in America.

It was strange to be sitting in a restaurant in the Netherlands, eating kangaroo, while listening to Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown and Walking in Memphis. You never would have known it was a Dutch blues band up there and not blues trio out of the south.

After licking ever bit of yogurt ice cream and strawberry Indonesian cake off our plates, we headed off the Stars and Bars - probably the only country-western bar within an hour train ride and the CLEANEST bar and pool hall I've ever seen. Charley Cruz and the Lost Souls - a pop/country/blues band was supposed to be playing, however, I think they let their kids perform the warm-up act. The teenagers were pretty good, but I didn't care for the beer on tap and time is relative thing here so we headed home after the warm-up group. But we might be back tomorrow to hear Memo Gonzalez & the Bluescasters - straight from Dallas, Texas.

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