Amsterdam Four: A Night at the Ballet

I usually don't embed YouTube videos on La France Profonde, but the version of the ballet Coppelia that we saw our second night in Amsterdam was so bubbly and colorful that I'm providing a view, in case anyone wants to chase winter blues away.

This outing was especially fun for a number of reasons. The girls had scoped out the idea of going to some sort of concert or other cultural show a few days before leaving, but since the whole trip was planned on the fly, I really wasn't sure we'd be able to see something so high quality on such short notice (as in buying tickets at the door.)

There were two performances of Coppelia on Sunday the 27th, and I found out by phone that the matinee was sold out, but that there were still tickets for the evening show. As I explained yesterday, we rushed to the theater to buy tickets in the morning, but they advised us to come back as students could get 10 euro seats at the box office right before the show.

I am always a little stressed out about showing up at events with no tickets, but this scheme was such a savings (we ended up getting great seats for four at an extremely affordable price.)

The Amsterdam muziektheater is lovely, quite modern, and extremely comfortable. Besides the production itself, there was a lot I liked about the experience. The three short acts were punctuated with fairly long intermissions, and a large choice of very nice food and drink was available during them -- once again, at non-prohibitive prices.

I don't know if this is more of a big-city thing, or a Dutch thing, or a ballet thing, but I found the longer intermissions with a chance to nibble on nice food and enjoy the ambiance very pleasant.

Also the show's starting time was right for me -- 7:15 pm. This may also allow for the longer intermissions that were provided.

All in all, it was a grand evening, and we were snug back in our hotel by 11pm.