I’m sorry! I appear to have forgotten to post for a week! In amongst all the holidays it’s been a busy one and we’ve achieved a lot! We’ve had a long weekend, and the Easter Bunny found us.
At least that’s how I’m deciding to explain all the chocolate that showed up on the dining room table anyway.
We slept in, we went for long walk in the emerging sunshine and explored a new park that we hadn’t previously explored. The weather was just spectacular, so we (like the rest of Amsterdam) made the most of it.
Months ago a wonderful friend bought me tickets to the National Opera, and the show date just happened to fall on ANZAC Day!
We went and saw Arabella at the Amsterdam Music Theatre. It was amazing! We dressed up, had a bite to eat before hand, and spent a wonderful night being girls and laughing at the reflection of life on the stage in front of us.
The next day was King’s Day! The first one in … since … ever! It began 4 generations ago, and all the monarchs since inception have been Queens!
We briefly went to Vondel Park, but only made it in about 100m before concluding that there were too many people for us to comfortably amble around.
It was interesting to us to see how many more people were out on the streets this year! It was HUGE. It took me a while to put together that, because of the abdication/inauguration last year, people will have spent more time at home having parties, and watching it all go down on TV. When it was quietest on the streets last year will have been when we were out and about.
We spent some time in a local corner café and people watched for a while. The density of characters means it is a pastime to which you can devote hours. Before long though we decided the chill in the wind was a bit much for us, and we headed on home to watch the street goings-on from our window.
With all the stalls, selling, and sales going on, the only thing we came home with was a massive bunch of tulips. This was my concession to being patriotic for the day. Next year we really should purchase something orange to wear.
ghoti industries 
We wore orange but skipped the vrijmarkt and just wandered around parts of town where the crowds were a bit more manageable. Still a great weekend!
I’m so slack! I really do need to buy something orange for us to wear next year! It was quite lovely sitting in the cafe on the street corner though, from that position we could watch all the traffic going into Vondel Park 🙂