Queen's Day celebrations

Queen's Day starts on the evening before - so we had some drinks at Claire's house in Amsterdam to warm up.

Everyone dresses in orange, so the boys procured a few orange tshirts while us girls got orange headgear. Check out how cute we are with our headbands!!

We had a great time - we went to a square where there was a street party and rocked out.

The next day there was a concert in Museumplein, so we headed down there.

I've got my hangover glasses on...

Muiderslot Castle and Volendam village

On Monday Claire and I ventured out to Muiderslot castle. Its a pretty small castle but a great example of something really really old.

Look, it even has a moat!

Here's me outside the front.

It was pretty cool to stand inside something which has been standing since 1200 and something. (Although its recently refurbished and has been added onto about a million times since it was first built).

The only bad thing was the large school group of very annoying dutch children.

The funniest part - we took the guided audio tour (in English of course). The English of this was pretty bad - sometimes there were lots of words but they didn't make much sense! Clearly the person who wrote the script seemed obsessed with the ceilings (which in all honestly looked the same as each other). It was classic!

After the castle we headed out to Volendam - this adorable little dutch village on the coast of the Zuidersee. There are heaps of little souvenir shops and so we shopped up a storm - gifts as well as stuff for us. It was great! I love souvenir shops and so I was like a kid at christmas, darting in and out of the stores while Claire begged me to stop for lunch!

It's Puppy Time!

This is Joreck! He belongs to Yvonne and Wix, some of Caroline's relatives. He is 8 weeks old and he is so cute! They have stone floors and Joreck spent most of the afternoon slip-sliding all over the lounge.

Aw, look at that face!

He already knows about where food goes - he wants whatever Yvonne's having!

Farewell BBQ at the boys' house

On Friday we had a farewell barbeque at the boys' house. Claire made this whopper bucket of her special punch, complete with vodka-soaked apples. They had a kick!

The actual physical barbeque-ing was less than ideal... Most of the food we ate got fried in the frypan - the bbq didn't work very fast! I think we needed to start it a little earlier in the day.

Here's Cherilyn and I later on in the evening...

A bunch of us girls got Kyryll to take us for a ride on his scooter - very fun but very scary!

Snoop Dogg Concert in Amsterdam

Last Thursday tickets went on sale for a 'surprise' concert by Snoop Dogg in Amsterdam. So we got tickets! Jen, Cherilyn and I headed down there to get all ghetto.

It was a great concert - quite a small venue so we got a reasonable view of the stage. It was a mission getting our coats back from the coat check at the end of the concert though - no queue, so everyone was just pushing!!

Keukenhof with Vanessa

On Saturday Vanessa and I headed out to Keukenhof, the tulip gardens! It was a great day. So many beautiful flowers and a windmill too! Here are some flower pictures:

Throughout the tulip park there are these cute places where you can sit down and take pictures. So of course we did! Here's Vanessa in the purple room.

And here I am frolicking in the flowers!

After lunch we headed out on some bikes for a quick ride around the neighbourhood tulip fields.

And here are my wheels for the afternoon!

Birthday Bash and Vanessa Visit

For my birthday Vanessa took the day off work and flew over from London.

Karen, Claire and I went out for lunch to this great Chinese restaurant - the atmosphere was so relaxing, it was like a day spa. We had some super food before heading back to work. On the way there was a promo girl handing out tiny cans of Coke Zero for free - Happy Birthday to me!

I look like a giant holding the wee can!

A group of us went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant (we had to search and search to find one that had nachos - I love nachos!). We had frozen margaritas and some delicious pina coladas. Cherilyn and Claire decorated the table with balloons - and tied one to my wrist too.

After dinner we headed out to Boom Chicago, the comedy club. The Late Nite show is an all-improvisation show where the cast are also drinking. It was much funnier than the show we went to with Scott - not sure if its because I had been drinking or because the cast had been!

Here's Vanessa, Kyryll and I at Boom Chicago-

Afterwards the others headed out to a club but Vanessa and I hit the hay - we had a big day ahead of us the next day!