Eindhoven Day 3

This day, Friday, 8 June, was the biggest reason as to why we found ourselves in Holland: a concert by the progressive rock band Camel.  They were set to perform the entire Moonmadness album live, plus other hits.

When we arrived in Holland on 6 June, just about the first news I read was that the Camel concert scheduled for the Hague (Den Haag) on 5 June had been canceled. The Hague would have been the first of four Netherlands shows. There was uncertainty if the remaining three Netherlands shows would proceed or not.

Andrew Latimer, the lead guitarist and founder of Camel, had suffered some kind of hernia at the last show in Poland on 3 June. Then we also learned that Latimer was diagnosed with pneumonia! 

Somehow, after a couple of days rest, the band decided to proceed with the rest of the tour, so a rather bitter irony was avoided. We had considered cancelling our entire Europe trip after the wife had broken her foot in late April, just six weeks before we were set to begin our European vacation. 

She seemed to be healing alright, but still had a lot of difficulty walking (and in Europe, walking is much more 'natural' than walking in the states) so we decided, almost at the last minute, to cancel the Bordeaux, France portion of our trip but keep the Holland portion. Just about everything for the trip was refundable, except for the Camel tickets.

So we arrived in Holland after almost cancelling our trip to learn that Camel might just cancel its tour, but the show did in fact go on, thank goodness. Andy is healing up nicely I understand. The tour had a four-week break before their next show scheduled for Germany, and then another month off before finishing up the tour in England.

Amsterdam Centraal Station

We slept late on Friday and made our leisurely way from our hotel to Centraal Station via tram. We bought train tickets at the station (only about 20 Euro each) to Eindhoven and waited for the next train south. Trains were running to Eindhoven every 20 minutes, so we caught one and enjoyed the 60-minute train trip thru the Holland countryside. 

Once in Eindhoven, we had a few hours before the show, so the girls went shopping for a few things at the Heuvel center, a really nice pedestrian-only shopping plaza in central Eindhoven. I wish the states would do some areas like Europe does - off-limits to cars. Sadly, we seem too married to our cars in America. Can't even seem to make many bike paths in America, so attached to our cars we are.

When the concert started for the packed house at the Frits Philip Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven (inside the Heuvel center), I admit I shed a few tears, as the tunes brought back some nice memories from over the years I had been listening to Camel's music. Funny how music can do this.

AFAIK, Camel performed in Houston only once, in 1974, and something prevented me from seeing the show. So I had never seen them live. Andy Latimer plays with much emotion, and I just kept tearing up throughout the show. It was pretty awesome. Due to Andy's health issues, he performed the whole show sitting in a chair, but it didn't diminish the performance at all. 

Andy also plays flute

Instead of taking the train back to Amsterdam after the show, we booked a luxury van, and had no trouble meeting the driver. The drive back was faster than the train, plus they took us right to the hotel and not Centraal Station, which would have meant catching another tram to the hotel. 

A great day in Holland.

BTW, you can hear Camel's entire Moonmadness LP by clicking here.