In Amsterdam / King’s Day Avoidance / To Iceland

2024-04-27Finnur's family, Holland Standard

[Photos taken 27 – 30 April 2024, posted online 30 August 2024. Lots of rain incoming. Hello fall.]

Amsterdam turns into a party-town on King’s day to celebrate their king’s birthday. People wear orange, there are orange decorations everywhere, and partying crowds, particularly downtown. I’m not a person that runs to where there are crowds, preferring to stay very very far away, so I pulled my “I’m an introvert”-card, and declared that I would be not be joining the group going downtown.

Instead I wandered towards a cafe that was listed as laptop-friendly, and hung out there for most of the afternoon. Classic me.

The whole group then went out to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant, which are very prevalent in Amsterdam because the Dutch colonized Indonesia for almost 350 years.

The following day we traveled back to Iceland, and life resumed as normal.

Saturday 27 April 2024

The Dutch celebrating the birthday of their king. Finnur took this photo, as I was far, far away!
As before, we all congregated downstairs for breakfast.
Finnur trying the bizarre chair in our room for a bit.
Around 13 the other’s took off towards downtown, and I began walking. This tree-pot that hangs down from the middle of the balcony caught my eye.
It wasn’t a long walk by any stretch of the imagination…
It was a slightly brisk day, weatherwise.
Bikes get all the love.
A curved building, spanning a canal.
There was a restaurant hiding at sea-level, and a bunch of boats were “parked” by it.
The birds ignored me.
Pretty blooms.
An open library.
Why is it so hard to take level photos of tree-tunnels like this one? I tried so many times, and this was the least-bad one.
A fairy-tale house.
Oh look, a bike! Note all the floating structures.
There were floating structures all along the waterline. You can see a windmill in the distance if you squint.
I looked the gym up, there was some fine-print.
I’m kicking myself for not taking a photo slightly to the left, but I didn’t want to intrude. There was a whole market square thing going on, apparently pop-up markets are all the rage on king’s day. The cafe was two doors in.
The classics.
Note the open plugs on the big table. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
A biological Roomba made an appearance…
About three hours later a block party had started across the road.
I snuck in closer to take a better photo of the orange balloons which was another photo-task set by the family-game-master.
Aside from the block party, the streets were quiet in this surburbia.
More orange balloons.
A hidden wedge building ahead.
Distant windmill alert!
The Dutch have a very different relationship to water than I do.
Instead of walking past a block of houses, I ventured in among them and stumbled upon another party!
Felt a little bit like California of old.
Spot the bird.
Sad plastic bag on the last little stretch towards the hotel.
The side of the hotel.
Nice melding of nature and graphic.
The path I took back to the hotel.
In front of the Indonesian restaurant Jun, around dinner time.
We got a good table, right by the window.
The birthday-babes!
We ended up with so much food! It all tasted very good!
Hubby and me.
The door had all the stickers!
Photo from our taxi to the hotel.
Another taxi photo.
A fun building to photograph.
Horizontal horizon?
The end of the orange-balloon-day!

Sunday 28 April 2024

Taking a photo of the “art” by the breakfast area. It was very “5 minute crafts”-ish.
The whole wall was tool-themed.
Feeling inspired?
Last look out our window.
The mini-bar fridge was all “drink water from the tap you silly person”.
Orange remnants of the previous day.
Passing the time before heading out to the airport.
Passing yet another waterway on our way to the airport.
Airport waiting.
Our plane.
Goodbye Holland!
Flying past an active volcano.
The weather was surprisingly nice.
Offspring-bribing.
The last huddle before we all went our separate ways.
Going to find our car…
The new volcano was visible from the road to the city. And that was the end of our trip to Amsterdam!

Monday 29 April 2024

A sad note on the fire-escape stair-well door at work, reminding people to actually close the door. The air-pressure inside the large stairwell was such that the doors didn’t close easily.
A sloooow sunset at 22:10.

Tuesday 30 April 2024

Thankfully, the trend in large-stair-well design is to have the floor numbers veeery visible!
An Australian lamington cake, by the resident Australian baking-enthusiast. He kept his job in the August-round of layoffs.
He made two different things! These were also excellent, but I can’t remember the specifics of what they were any more.
The first in an end-of-an-era. The one in the middle was the other person in the “Data Corner”, and this was her last day. The lady on the right is/was our magical scrum-master/herder-of-cats/delivery-manager.