Happy Queen's Day!

It was a fantastic day!!! Here are some of my favourite pictures. More details and pictures to come! It was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

Three points:
1) Jan and I wore more orange than almost anyone else. We topped our starting outfits off by finding him a free inflatable crown which he wore the whole day like a champ, and me massive earrings that have ribbons of the Dutch flag and hideous orange flowers
2) There is still a loud party going on right outside of the hotel room. I am wondering when it will stop because I would like to go to bed soon! (See last photo)
3) I think I drank 12 beers today. Not too shabby. The second photo below is beer number two. I also bought a cake pop from a little girl.

Many shades of orange

Tomorrow is Queen's Day. It is the biggest national holiday in Holland and a massive street party and drinking festival everywhere. Jan arrived tonight for the festivities. We checked out several concerts near the hotel. The streets are already crowded but I know tomorrow will be 1000 times busier.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow - there has been so much hype about Queen's Day since I got here that sometimes I think the purpose of my trip is to celebrate Queen's Day and not for work! This year is a special Queen's Day because she is abdicating her throne and crowning her son. So it is also the last Queen's Day because next year it will move to the new King's birthday on April 27 and be called King's Day. Royalty from all over the world is going to be in attendance tomorrow.

On Saturday I shopped the sale racks to find us our special Queen's Day outfits. Here is a preview of things to come. So far we have 5 different shades of orange. Jan has a t-shirt in his bag somewhere. I haven't seen it yet but I'm confident it will provide a sixth shade!!!

Hotel Pulitzer

I may be living in the most beautiful hotel ever. And now that I will be here for three weeks solid I feel like I am living here. I finally unpacked both my suitcases - there are many clothes I have not worn yet!! - and settled into my final room in Amsterdam. I've also just called up for an iron and ironing board - everything at the bottom of my suitcase looks as thought it's been at the bottom of a suitcase for 6 weeks - we will see how I fare with that. One life skill I haven't quite mastered yet....

The hotel Pulitzer is made up of 25 canal houses from the 17th and 18th century and each room is a bit different. I'm in a two-floor room for the rest of my stay, overlooking one of the most historic canals - Prinsengracht. It's a bit nosier on the canal side but the view is worth it! AND the windows open, which is such a treat in a hotel room!

Here's the what the hotel looks like from the outside:

 Here's the inside of my amazing room:

View from "upstairs" looking down:

The bed up in the rafters!!

And last but not least, the view from my window. I am right on top of the brown and white boat that is in the top picture (owned by the hotel):

Keukenhof

Today I went to Keukenhof which is a massive park / garden filled with amazing flowerbeds. I of course went to see the tulips, but there was much more than that to see! I was worried the tulips would be over - in many years they are all cut down before the end of April - but this year I think everything is late and many hadn't even opened yet. There was still a lot to see....and I have some beautiful pictures if I may say so myself! So they might come to you over several blogs :-)

Getting to Keukenhof is a bit of a trek - I walked to the train station, then took the train to the airport then switched to a bus that takes about half an hour to get to the gardens. It took close to 90 minutes I think. I wasn't sure it was going to be worth it, but the sun was out and the flowers were amazing, and it definitely was!

Here are a few of my favourite pictures .... More to come!

Tower of London

The main thing I did in London was visit the Tower of London. I thought it was going to be a Tower!!! But it is more of a small fort. It has a fantastic history - has held a lot of prisoners, was used as a zoo, etc etc etc! It was also a royal residence way back in the day - that's why it originally had to be so fortified.

Today the royal bodyguards (Beefeaters) live there and get locked into the grounds every night with their families! A doctor and a surgeon live there too! Some of the buildings are museums today, and one also houses the royal jewels (a bunch of crowns and swords).

This is going to be the least factual blog I might have ever written. My mind is a bit rusty and the tour guide spoke quickly in a strong accent. So better to show you some pictures and let you google "Tower of London" if you want to know more!

Here I am at the entrance. They used to actually have lions guarding the Tower!

Here is a guard. I waited a long time but he didn't move!

One of the displays inside the Tower was all of the horses of each King. This one is for AE. I didn't see any of Duke's or AV's relatives, but you never know. 

The end of the Changing of the Guard. An old man walked after them imitating them to amuse his grandsons. Was quite funny!

Here I am exiting one of the towers

Technical Problems!!

Something has gone wrong! I cannot upload any pictures to my blog. Fingers crossed this issue fixes itself by tomorrow. You'll have to wait until then for an interesting post!

For now - if I were able to post a photo - it would be of a bottle of cough medicine covered in Dutch writing. The guy I'm working with Philip took me to a drugstore at lunch and found me a bottle of strong cough syrup for my very annoying, often uncontrollable, slightly scary sounding cough. I drank a half bottle in London and it didn't help, so here's hoping the Dutch have something a bit stronger at their disposal!!!

Bye for now!

De Kermis - Cologne

Several weeks ago I said one of the German phrases I knew was about "de kermis" - the phrase in English is "The fair is next to the river." A very useful phrase I'm sure...but I learned it because there happened to be a fair next to the river in Cologne and Jan and I went to it one night. It was small, but we went on one ride. Jan was lucky that the fair closed before I could convince him to go on a "scary" ride where he would be lifted off of the ground. Instead he had to buy me a chocolate covered banana. He and my uncle would get along at theme parks....both would be good at holding my purse and waiting for me to finish the rides!

Here are a few pictures from de Kermis.

London Marathon

Sunday morning I met many friends from HBS for brunch and we then went to watch the London marathon. It was so nice to meet up with friends I hadn't seen in almost two years. And amazing what a diverse group there is living in London - Canadians, Americans, a German, a true multi-national (British?) and unfortunately my Polish and Iceland(ic??) friends were not able to meet us because they were at a wedding for another friend in Mexico / doing some other travelling!

After a great brunch - where I tried and loved squeaks and bubbles (potatoes with cabbage) for the first time  - we went to watch the leaders of the London marathon about 5-6 minutes before the finish line. We saw the wheelchairs, the blind runners (attached to and running with guides), the elite men, and then the leaders of the "normal people." Some very fast runners!

Here are two pictures from the beautiful day.

London, in brief

Well it was a fantastic weekend in London! The weather was perfect, I had a good time at the McKinsey office on Friday, and I saw many sights and had very long walks on Saturday and today (Sunday). The only bad part is that I had a terrible cough and sore throat. But it must be getting better soon! More details to come, but here are a couple of my favourite pictures featuring my initials. Proof I should be a royal.

London!!

Oh no! After 4-5 weeks I missed my first day (or two days??) of posts. This week was a bit crazy - after the vacation last week, the red-eye flight on Sunday, and being sick (yes, I have had a cold all week) my beloved blog hasn't really crossed my mind!

BUT. Now I am in London - woohoo - and I am one hour away from the weekend - double woohoo! I am staying in a very lovely hotel that is a 2 minute walk away from our very lovely office here in Picadilly Circus. Here is something I saw on that 2 minute walk.

Look forward to more fun updates from London over the next few days!

Windmill!!

Here is my first real windmill in Holland! I had to go 40 minutes outside of Amsterdam for a meeting today - on the coast - and saw this windmill and many fields of flowers on the way.

Just for mom!

Hiatus in Universal Studios, Orlando !

It's been awhile!! I'm back in Amsterdam now after a short hiatus in Universal Studios, Orlando where I joined my aunt and uncle on a trip that we'd planned ages ago. For a variety of reasons it didn't go exactly as planned, but it was still a great time! Here are some of my favourite pictures!

Locks in Cologne

Guess what??? I am back in Toronto! Just for a few hours. I fly to Orlando tonight with my family for a fun weekend at Universal Studios! Then back to Amsterdam on a redeye Sunday night. It will be a tiring but fun weekend! I don't know if I will be able to continue the blog - not sure if I will have internet access - but will try with an update from Harry Potter Land maybe!!

In the meantime, here is another picture I love from Cologne!

The big train bridge in Cologne has thousands (tens of thousands?) of locks on it with couples' initials. They attach the lock and throw away the key. Quite the sight to see!!

Berlin Wall

Back to the past! Here are some of my favourite pictures of the Berlin wall from Easter weekend! The main portion that is still standing is called the East Side Gallery and is painted with murals. There is a chance it could get taken down soon because they would like to develop the land behind it, so I'm glad I got to see it! Right before this I had a pretzel which is one of my favourite things to do in Germany (as you likely know by now!!)

Ampelmännchen (Berlin)

Ampelmännchen means "little traffic light man" in German and was one of the cool little things I learned about in Berlin. Prior to reunification in 1990 East and West Germany had different amplemen. They East German ampleman still exists in Berlin - and for the most part is an easy way to tell if you are in East or West Berlin.

The East German ampleman is so popular there is even an entire store selling everything from clothes to cups to baby bottles to notebooks with amplemen on them. There is even a restaurant in Berlin that is Ampelman-themed. I told Jan I had no interest in going!

The first two photos are from East Berlin; the last is from West Berlin

How cologne got its name?

An old perfume company called 4711 first made "Eau de Cologne" named after the city....so I assume this is how cologne got its name! Wikipedia (the source of the truth for this blog!) doesn't say if this is where the name comes from, so it's just a hopefully good guess!

Jan and I went in the flagship store .... But he told me it smelled like his grandmas so I didn't make any purchases! (No offence to my grandmas or his!!)

Here is the building

Brezel

Pretzels (Brezel) are one of my favourite things to eat in Germany. I brought one back with me today for breakfast tomorrow I like them so much!! Saturday morning we went to a very nice bakery - I just had a plain pretzel but you can see from the pictures there was a lot to choose from!! The second last picture is of Berliners - like a jam-filled donut. I didn't try them but you can get them 2 for a euro!