Koninginnedag in Amsterdam

Queen's birthdays not your thing? Normally this would be a day of dignitaries parading about in a paddock but not in the Netherlands! Somehow the Dutch royalty have remained a quite 'normal' family, OK very posh but still seen about on the streets. On the 30th of April they celebrate the Queen's birthday, actually it's the Dutch Queen Mother's birth date, and it's really a day of celebrating Dutchness more than anything else. It's also the free market day, where at some point in history they declared the date tax free on private sales. So what it really ends up being is...

a.) a holiday
b.) a huge party about the city the night before (due to a.)
c.) a huge outdoor garage sale as it's tax free (or was?)
d.) a massive street party
e.) and possibly the worlds largest display of the colour orange ever seen??

We spent the day roaming about the Jordaan (you don't get very far on two wheels on this particular day in Amsterdam),with KiwiMark, Julie, John & Hester and the usual suspects. Great fun was had by all and it was to be the warmest Queensday on record, a relief as last year it barely got above 10 degrees!

Here's some photo's we collected with our new telephoto lens...

Innovative Dutch style disco lighting

Crowd gearing up for Konningenacht (pre match party night)

The Usual Suspects, Konningenacht

Size 38 anyone? Imelda Marcos seated on the right

Looking for a parking spot

Show me yer orange

Celebrating from a safe distance

The throng in the Jordaan

A very questionable T shirt (lucky you can't it read eh?)

Hup Holland!

Mayhem on the canals

Orange party boat

Old style Amsterdam sounds

Oranje boven!

Orange at birth

Julie, Mark & Hester

Julie & Sharon

The Usual Suspects!

The future King of the Netherlands

VW Transporter 60th Birthday

Back in Holland we were due to swing by our mates at POPTOP (VW campervan specialists) to collect a few more things we required for the summer leg. But lucky we checked on their website first, because on the day we were due to be in their neck of the woods, they weren’t going to be there…they would be at the VW Transporter 60^th birthday party!!

Being the proud owners of one utterly gorgeous VW Transporter T4 we couldn’t miss an opportunity like this! So with favourite cousin Fenna on board we headed off to the party.

The Kiwi contingent!

While we were expecting to see more than a few Transporters over the weekend long event, nothing quite prepared us for the 1000+ vans and around 4000 people camped up for a weekend of celebration!

Lots of pretty poptops camped in a row

Fields and fields of Transporters

The start of the great Transporter drive by. Imagine being stuck behind this lot!

And how well organised it was, being very well funded by VW themselves to mark 60 years of the Transporter in Holland. Parked up around the 4 different fields were Transporters of all different shapes, sizes and colours, from the cute little T1 and T2 Combis to the very flash latest edition T5s.

After spending the afternoon walking around admiring all the different vans, the celebration came alive in the evening with BBQs (with both the actual BBQs and food packs supplied by the organisers) and a live band and beer tent. What a great party!

Happy 60th!

Here are some of the highlights from the weekend...

Happy camping! An original T1

The afternoon's entertainment - the DJ camper!

Modified T2

The Belgian beer bar

Flower Powered T2

Genuine Surf Safari

The oldest driving T1 - an original Dutch fire engine!

Very stylish camping - Jamie Oliver eat your heart out!

but the most gorgeous of them all....Wickse Witte

The Keukenhof

20 April

Well it is spring and we are in The Netherlands, so you kind of have to visit the Keukenhof really, don’t you!

Full of omas (nanas) and tourists, the Keukenhof is THE place to come see tulips in Holland, and be fleeced of quite a few euros at the same time.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, so here’s a few million for you…

Red ones

and pink ones

and pinky-red ones

and more!

and orange ones

and yellow ones

and ones the size of my hands!

and pink and white ones

and black ones

and burgundy ones

and mixed ones

and man aren't we pleased we bought this fabulous zoom lens!!

In the wild, well rather not in the Keukenhof!

Absolutely stunning!!

The Black Forest

So after all the excitment of Liechtenstein it was time to head back to the Land of the Low.

The route back from the Alps to The Netherlands was straight up and along the autobahns of Germany, so with a day or so to spare we decided to take a detour through the Black Forest. But firstly, to answer a couple of burning questions...

1) Is there a forest? Yes! Although, interspersed with a fair amount of pasture and farmland.
2) Is it really black? Well, no not exactly, but rather what those in the know call a "dark canopy of evergreen".

Trivia aside, the Black Forest has long associated with ice cream and gateaux in our minds, and while we didn’t discover too much ice cream, the original Black Forest Gateau did not disappoint! Soaked in kirsch and dripping in cream and cherries it certainly brought a smile to Eric’s face.

Hmmm...Black Forest Gateau!

The region was bursting with the new growth of spring, even though it was only just April, with cherry trees in full bloom and bright flowers blossoming out of window boxes across the villages as we drove by. Pretty little villages full of half timbered houses and evocatively named “pilstubes” (beer cafes) beckoning us around many a corner. We could definitely spend more time here.

The view from our camping spot at Schiltach

A very pretty town indeed!

Sampling the local brew

But the unexpected highlight of the region was undoubtedly the cuckoo clocks!

We had spent most of our time in Switzerland avoiding these gaudy, tacky, tourist fancies, but by the time we got to the Black Forest – and the real home of the cuckoo clock – and saw just how beautiful the German versions were, we had to admit that we both secretly wanted one!

Hmmm...now which one?

And so after much deliberation between the various different models, we are now the proud owners of an authentic Black Forest cuckoo clock – made on the premises of the Hexenlochmuhle, and crafted using the power harnessed from the actual watermill (muhle).

This one!

It was made right here in the workshop...

...powered by this very watermill!

Hexenloch (or “Witch’s Hole”) is a wondrously cool and creepy little valley which apparently is so cold that Lonely Planet states you can see banks of snow months after it has melted elsewhere. Not so true in our case, but after the near tropical weather conditions in St Anton and the rest of the Alps at the moment, you can’t imagine much snow lying around the hillsides or witches holes of Germany.