Meanwhile, we're having a blast! Have walked though so many places, and today is Queen's Day, so it's just nuts. Imagine San Francisco Gay Pride, Castro Street Fair, Folsom Street Fair, The Jazz Festival, etc. all at once in a tiny little city. It's a sea of people, many of whom are very mellow. Ahem. Accept for the drunken packs of sixteen-year-old-boys being loud and obnoxious. I think I'm becoming an oldster.
The canals are gorgeous, filled with boats loaded with orange-clad revelers - a sight to see for sure.
It was nice to walk around early in the day. On Queen's Day, everyone is allowed to setup shop on the street, so it was a city-wide garage sale/flea market. The red light district is neat, very narrow and filled to the brim with little shops, coffee shops, cafes - most of which served food. Lots of Indonesian, Thai, "oriental", Italian, etc. Dutch food is rare and very hard to find. But it's there.
We covered SO much ground today, too, walking all over and around the U-shaped streets and canals, finally cracking the code on how to understand which street (straat") or canal (gracht) we were on. It's very, very easy to get turned around, and finally figuring out how to find north was a good thing. That and just asking for help. :)
Our big lesson yesterday was "Why do all the houses have a hook at the very top?" Answer: To hoist furniture and other large items in through the window! And the houses are built so that the front is leaning slightly forward, ensuring that what ever is being lifted doesn't hit the front of the house.
Neat! We're gonna take off now and head over to find more food and a beer or three.
Update - later that day. And we did. Met lots of fun folks but had to navigate street after street packed with drunken, stoned revelers. An amazing sight sure, but we don't go to street parties when we're at home!
We finally made our way to the "little lion" gay bar that we liked (the owner is pictured above, between the Chicago gay and the Los Angeles gay), but had to walk through a dance area that blocked the entire alley way. When we passed through the two towers of speakers (a DJ was spinning on a metal suspension bridge above us), the music was so loud I felt like my heart was being forced to beat differently. It was LOUD. I'm not kidding. LOUD.
After a very pleasant afternoon of beers and more beers (it got better once David showed the new bartender what a bottle of whisky looks like), we decided sagely that it would be better to walk around the revelers to get home. Mistake. Got turned around and ended up far south-west of our hotel. But again, we just had to ask (several times) and we landed a block from the hotel - just approached it wrong was all. Surrrrrreeee we did. We then had a great meal at a cafe (got there just in time, the kitchen was just closing!), soup, salad, bread, croquettes and of course, beer.
And I do believe we slept well. :)
