Was interesting. We ended up wandering around at least a quarter of the central part of Amsterdam, and one of the funniest things (for me) was that Dam square was probably one of the places that it was easiest to move and the least crowded.
Kingsday is a Dutch national holiday generally held on the birthday of the current monarch, but held the day before this year as his birthday falls on a Sunday and they don't do big national parties on Sundays here. Every city, town, and village holds their own massive party with lots of loud music, food, and alcohol and the occasional mini playland. The Royals make an appearance in two towns every year. I don't remember which ones they were in this year.
The biggest party that everyone says you need to check out is, of course, in Amsterdam. There's extra trains running in and out Centraal Station all day, and they're all full. Not sardine like full, but all seats taken full. We walked through the North end of the Jordaan to Westerpark, then back down through the Centruum to Dam, and finally across in to the Red Light district and Chinatown.
In the North part of Jordaan it's pretty darn quiet on the side streets, but you can only move at a crawl on the main streets. It's a free for all when it comes to booths on the street. Most of the food joints have an outside stall, there's random beer bars, and as near as I can tell Kingsday is when everyone and his dog has a garage sale. So some of the stores have stalls, but most of what I saw was the result of Spring cleaning. Makes sense, actually. Amsterdam is not set up in such a way that would make it easy to have garage sales normally. Then, of course, back down to Dam. The giant fair from Halloween was back in the centre of everything with associated wurst, poffertjes, oliebollen, friete, and waffles stands. Oh, and cotton candy. Dam is where everyone ends up when they want to sit down for a minute or two, so there was the usual crowd around the national monument and (because Kingsday) an absolutely staggering amount of beer detritus including way too much broken glass.
Next is Red Lights and dim sum. The Red Light district was much as it usually is, only they were all aloud to be drunk and high on the streets instead of in the bars and coffeeshops. So it was more crowded and a heck of a lot louder. In the Red Light district, Kingsday is pretty much and excuse to start partying earlier and on the street. The ladies of the area seemed like they might be doing a fair trade (again, makes sense) so there were more lights on in the windows than I usually see in the middle of the afternoon. Several of the bars had outside music stands and were basting it loud enough to make peoples ears bleed. And it was so bloody crowded around those places that you had to fight to get through which means your stuck having your pounded longer than you'd like. It was at this point that my headache started.
Chinatown should perhaps be re-named. It isn't Chinese specific, as a district. I think Asian Quarter might be more accurate. Walking along the street (singular, so quarter might not work as a name change) there were at least five different styles of Asian cuisine. I saw Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean for sure. Oh, and Dutch, but that's hardly Asian.
At this point the sun was making my headache worse and we were getting hungry and tired so we decided to get food and go home. The train was very empty, so we got our pick of seats, and blessed quiet.
We split up when we got to Hilversum, so I decided to try a new route back by following the bus route on the bike. It's quite nice. Quiet as in no traffic and very pretty. it makes the uphill part longer, windy, and more annoying so I'd likely only take that route home and never on the way in. Is topped in Laren to pick up some stuff at the Albert Hijn, and a friendly older gentleman stopped me and asked if I'd enjoyed Kingsday and where I was from, which was nice.
And after that? After that I just crashed. TTfN y'all.
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