We lucked out again with Queen’s Day this year – no rain! The night before – Queen’s Night – Matt and I met some friends at the Homo Monument outside of the Westerkerk (yes, the homo monument is at a church) – for the Drag Queen Olympics. Aside from the few games of stiletto sprints and purse throwing, it was mostly just drag queens strutting their stuff on stage. Fun, but I couldn’t help feeling like the queens weren’t giving it their all. Sigh…
After that we all headed to watch the soccer match at a nearby bar. The girls soon got bored of that and went next door to eat pizza and drink wine and celebrity dish. We did send over a Meaty Madness pizza to the boys at the bar – such good girlfriends we are.
On Queen’s Day, Matt got home from work at 11am and we had ourselves a champagne breakfast and watched the freaks from our balcony. Queen’s Day is pretty much a city-wide yard sale, and people sell their oldest, most ridiculous and useless junk, and drunk people buy it. Lucky for us, our friends bought some of that useless junk to give to us – these include a bowling pin, a 100-year old golf bag, a leaning CD tower, a moth-bitten orange herringbone blazer and various stuffed Winnie the Pooh characters. Our idea is to keep the bowling pin, and have it passed around amongst our friends every time someone else has a party. The rest of the stuff was left out for the garbage man.
At around 2pm our friends started arriving, and by 3 we had about 25 people at our place, swinging beers and wolfing down my homemade dip. Matt and I taught our friends Jen and Joep how to “jump dance” and the 4 of us put on quite the show for everyone, which led to one of my favorite moments of the day – when our friend Will shouted “It’s a walk-off!” (Zoolander reference). The second favorite was when Joep tried to leave the stuffed Tigger he had just bought perched on the balcony, and the poor thing plunged to the ground. Seeing this poor stuffed animal laying face down on the concrete was such an anomaly with all the drunken merriment going on around it.
Eventually we headed out of our apartment into the madness in the streets. Eight of us returned to our place a few hours later for an epic barbecue. The next day was also a holiday, and we spent it cleaning the place and recovering.
On Friday, Matt had to work. I studied a bit in the morning, then around 11:30 my friend Sascha and I met up for some lunch and shopping. We had a very successful day, and the weather was just perfect. At 5:30 we grabbed a terrace and Sascha’s boyfriend Ross and Matt joined for drinks and dinner.
Saturday and Sunday were again beautiful days. Saturday we went out with Ross and Sascha and some other friends on Sascha’s parents’ boat. We toured the canals all day, even went out into the red light district which is always a fun place to see from the boat. We ate cheese and crackers and drank rosé while watching the tourists spill from the coffeeshops. Around 5:30 we got dropped off by another friend’s place for his barbecue. He has a fantastic roof terrace in a great little neighborhood in the Jordaan. Sunday we packed some OJ and snacks and headed to the vondel park as soon as we got up – us and the rest of the city. By 3pm our little spot looked like the beaches in Rio in Feburary – so crowded! We decided to try out one of the famous Chinese food places in the red light district for dinner. Though the décor left much to be desired (think roasted chickens hanging in the window) the food did not disappoint.
Amsterdam is really a different place when the weather is like this – everyone is out enjoying the sunshine and the city is just electric. The only problem is that, because these moments are so rare, you feel the uncontrollable need to just enjoy every bit of it by being outside and with friends. So by the time Sunday night comes around, and the sun goes down at 10pm, you realize you still have to clean, do laundry, clear the dishwasher, put away your winter clothes and prepare for work on Monday. Whatever though, I would take that any day over the miserable winter!
This weekend is another long weekend - Monday is Pinksterdag (or as I call it, Pinkerton). The plan for this weekend is for 8 of us to take a road trip down to the Champagne region in France. We're going to drink champagne, play crocquet (we're bringing a set down), suntan and eat lots of French cheese.
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