FINALLY!!! Finally! Finally! Finally!

After a month of being homeless, I am happy to report I have found a place to live!

The place is quite nice, except for awful green carpet. It's a large 3 bedroom apartment (my room is the smallest) with a big kitchen and living area. It sits on the edge of Rembrandt Park. Literally, the park begins at the back of the building. We are on the 12th floor with a North & East facing corner unit. The living area and balcony face East, so they get the sun until 1pm. My room faces North and from it I can see the sunsets. On the other side of the building (West side) is the road to our building and immediately after is the A10 highway. So from my room you can see and hear the freeway. With the window closed, it's not too loud, and it's a constant noise so I don't think it will bother me at all.

The view from the living room and balcony is quite incredible. Because Amsterdam is flat we can see right across the whole city, with the park laid out right in front of us.

My two room-mates are Marc - a Dutch lawyer around 34 and Agnes - a Latvian auditor around 24. They both seem really nice and easy going.

The room has a single bed, but they said I can buy a double bed if I want. I went out to buy bedding and a duvet today, and will see about buying a bed tomorrow.












This map shows the location of the apartment, with the shaded part showing the scope of our view! In fact, it's not totally accurate as we can see the power lines on the Eastern most part of the city from here.


So yesterday was Queen's Day and it was quite a party! The evening before I went out with some people from the expatriates group I meet up with. They had arranged the private hiring of an open boat for the evening. It ended up being quite the adventure as the owner was not licensed to take out groups, so if we were boarded by the police we were to tell them we are all friends of his. The fact that didn't have a license should have been a bit of a warning. On a few occasions we actually got lost and ended up going down dead-end canals. We had a good time all the same.

The evening before Queen's Day wasn't nearly as hectic on the water (or land) as we had thought. It was a great experience to see Amsterdam from the water though, especially at night. Unfortunately many of my pictures didn't turn out.

This is our boat before we left. Everyone brought drinks and snacks, preparing for our 3 hours (which turned into 4) on the water.






















This is another boat who followed us under a bridge. Here you can see how low some of the bridges are. On many occasions we had to duck in order to clear the bridges.


The actual Queen's Day (April 30) was like nothing I have seen before. The whole city stops and parties for the day. Imagine the group of people that gathers for the Symphony of Fire fireworks on each of the 4 nights... now imagine all 4 nights worth of people at the same time... that is what Amsterdam was like. However, they were spread out throughout the whole city as there was stuff going on on every single street.

I walked down so many small residential streets and people were spilling out of their homes. Doors and windows were opened with people sitting out in front of their homes selling odds and ends and baked goods. If you can think of it, someone, somewhere was probably trying to sell it.

Depending on what you wanted to see, hear or do, depended on what part of town you headed to. Vondel Park turned into a kids party with everything in the park geared towards children. That included kids themselves setting up along the pathways performing, setting up games of skill or selling things.

Everywhere you went there was music. It was a constant. People opened their windows and aimed their speakers into the streets. DJs and small stages were set up on bridges, in squares or on a small lane simply because they wanted to.

I heard some great music, ate some fantastic food and enjoyed the vibe in the city. One thing was very noticeable; the mood was jovial and upbeat. There weren't angry people fighting or trying to cause trouble. When you have so many people in such a constricted space, there is a chance for things to go badly, but that wasn't the case.

The amount of traffic on the water was staggering. So many of these long party boats had DJs on board broadcasting music. In fact certain roads were as loud as a nightclub! But if that isn't your thing, turn the corner and you might find a small stage with a rock band and people dancing in the street.



Here is a boat that had a DJ and a drummer on board! This party was on a scale I couldn't fathom before.








All over Amsterdam are these awful outside urinals. This picture does it justice. There is room for 4 guys (1 on each side) and their backs are expose, leaving very little in the way of privacy. You see these all the time, but there were way more of them set up for this event.






























































Before the party






During