we survived Queen's Day!!! and enjoyed it!

Queen's Day has come and gone and we survived - it actually was not as crazy as i thought it would be. i expected it to be very loud throughout the night but once it got dark the traffic on the water died down quickly. i am sure the streets were still crazy but we didn't venture out past 5pm or so, as managing the streets was nearly impossible. and forget bringing kids out in that mess of humanity. but alas, i am getting ahead of myself.

the morning started very early - i woke up around 6am and ventured out on my bike. people were starting to set up their blankets on the ground and unpacking their stuff to sell. it is the one day where anybody can sell anything without a permit so people tape off stretches of sidewalk a day or two beforehand and claim it as their own. i saw pretty much everything being sold (except for old bras, sorry mary!).

our local park, amstelveld, is designated as a kids only sale. young merchants sold all their old toys and clothes to make money for new stuff. they also sold baked goods and set up games to make money. our neighbor's children sold cupcakes and had a manicure station as their money making scheme. my kids had been saving their (well MY) money for weeks and circled the park over and over again with their banks in hand searching for stuff to buy. i indulged them in basically anything they wanted since we had been hyping it soo much. the photo here was taken early in the morning - the park got much more crowded and busy by mid morning.

after amstelveld we ventured into vondel park. holy crowded. it took forever to get into the park and navigate anywhere. again, more sales were going on, as well as kid friendly activities like acrobats and kid dj's.

by the time we got out of vondel park the canal streets were incredibly crowded and it took us quite some time to go the short distance home. music and people were spilling out of bars congesting the intersections and mini raves popped up with very loud music. and let me tell you, techno is alive and well in europe.





the canal boat traffic was also incredible. we enjoyed watching it from the safety of our terrace as were not NOT about to navigate the boat in the sea of watercraft. we saw some pretty stupid things, too, like 2 large boats roped together which caused a traffic jam which caused both boats to be hit and one of them almost slamming into our house. boats were jammed with people and had large sound systems blarring techno music. it was quite a site to experience. every canal in the area probably looked like this.

i also saw massive amounts of public urination. despite hundreds or portable urinals throughout the city most men found it perfectly appropriate to pee anywhere they felt like it. on one block i saw 6 men peeing. and what really ticked me off was that port-a-potties were not free so women were forced to pay to pee, unlike men... grrrrr. i didnt see a single woman squatting to pee in public but then again, i didn't venture out past 5pm....

the only odd thing that happed was that a boat of men pulled up to our house and tried to gain access to the street by going through the house. there are many places you can pull your boat up to and disembark - why they felt the need to do this at our place is beyond me. i nearly shoved the guy into the canal. and i was standing right there when they pulled up - why they didn't ask me if they could do it just boggles my mind. i would have said no anyway but jeez, just ask me!!