Anna and Elysia do Lowlands: Aug 17-19

This weekend Elysia and I made the hour long trek out of Amsterdam to Lowlands, the Netherland's biggest music festival. It was a huge festival, much bigger than Werchter, with many stages not only music, but film and other live performances as well. But musically, it wasn't as good. Because of all the stages, there were many schedule conflicts between awesome bands, and at other times filler like movies and cartoons took over. There were also a lot of shops, which was cool since I could get a whole new wardrobe. At the same time, it was souless; corporate sponsors ran everything, and many people spent hours in line waiting to get free crap they would never wear, rather than go and enjoy the bands. Many times I was the only person dancing! Strange, since dancing at a rock concert is the highlight of any festival isn't it? Another annoying thing was all the tents; no stage was outdoors. I guess they're scared of the rain, but rain is awesome when you're rocking out. Plus, if you weren't at the tent early on you didn't get in, and outside the tent you couldn't see the stage, there were no screens, and the sound wasn't great. I had an awesome time, but Lowlands is something you go to for the festival experience, not the music!

As always, saw a bunch of bands:

Editors - sound great live

Kasabian

The Good, The Bad & The Queen

Basement Jaxx - played on the side stage and it was packed

The Killers - much better than at Werchter. But Werchter was bigger musically; Killers played an evening show there, while at Lowlands they were that night's headliners so I guess they felt more confident

Brand New

The Rifles

Gabriel Rios

The View

CSS - awesome to dance to

Interpol - much better than at Werchter, after this show I'd see them again

Alpha Blondy

The Shins

Kings of Leon

Nine Inch Nails

Goose - the best band to dance to live, EVER

Enter Shikari - again, best stage presence. I had to buy their tshirt for it

Arcade Fire

Tool - the band has no cameras on them, ever. The screens are filled with highly disturbing images, most of which are from the videos. Plus the singer is weird, and from far away all I could see was the strange shape of his head (I don't know what he was wearing). The funny thing is when he speaks he seems so nice and normal, almost wimpy. They're music is hypnotic. I want to hang out with the singer from Tool one day, could be interesting.

Simian Mobile Disco (DJ set) - the cool thing about the festival was that it also had tents with DJs so you could dance all night long, which we did.

The festival had lots of random, cool instillations, like this one, everywhere. Why do I look so wrecked on day 1?

The main tent; I hated the tents.


The gates of rock. We couldn't figure out what the number meant; my guess was number of visitors.

In the morning one of the acts was this dude in the massive bird cage, whistling.

Our favorite food tent

And one of the random screens showing Pingu!

It seemed like the carrot was everyone's favorite meeting point.



The iconic Lowlands pic

Gay Pride - August 4

During pride weekend there were street parties and events all over the city, along with the worlds largest floating gay parade. The parade was a bit boring but it was awesome to see so many people out on the streets just having fun.

One of the street parties the night before the parade; check out this guy's awesome shirt.

Amsterdam city hall, surrounded by people day of the parade

People were all over this bridge going over the Amstel river, which is where the parade ends.

The parade ran down one of the city's main canals, Prinsengracht

Guy diving off a float






The river Amstel, where the parade ends.

24th Birthday in Amsterdam

My Birthday festivities started Saturday evening when Jesse and I and co. headed off to a rave in the Hague. I dressed as a fairy, and we partied until the morning.

When we got back to Amsterdam, we went to a friends house, and partied more. Although, I must admit, at this point I was a bit tired and was more the "fallen fairy" then the star of the party that I was earlier.
Since my birthday was on a Monday, and I wanted to do something uber-Amsterdam, I decided to go on a boat trip through the canals in the evening with a few of my friends. We had cake, wine, and of course, green.

Paul, Elysia, Daan, Jesse, old lady

I really wanted to see Amsterdam at night from the canals; it was beautiful, but unfortunately you can't see all the lights in the pictures.




Overall it was an amazing birthday, one I will never forget. Definitely an "only in Amsterdam" adventure.