Continue with the work socializing

I got it into my head that I REALLY wanted to see the Kekeunof in the Netherlands. I had no one to go with me the first time I went. I was so desperate to go that I thought I would call up Chante, a mutual friend from work, who I had talk to about a handful of times. Well the Volcano changed my plans for last year, so I geared up to go and nothing was going to stop me this time.

I left Thursdays straight from work and met up with Chante at the gate where she was able to get a business class ticket and I was not, but once we got on the plane they kicked her back to coach. For 8 hours we shifted around like cattle until we arrived at Amsterdam. It was great for the first thing we did was take a train to the Hague (UN world court is based there), where we took a tram to Scheveningen the sea side resort of the Netherlands. It was rather quaint, but dead since the North Sea could freeze your bum off right now. They had this great hotel which reminded me of Salt Aire and just confirmed my thought that people will do anything for a beach and water to swim.

After we checked into our hotel we made our way into the heart of Hague where we went to the Mauritshuis which is the musuem that houses The Girl with the Pearl Earring. I never really liked that picture until seeing in person because someone finally explained why it is such a great painting. The pearl is only two brush strokes, and your eye completes the rest of the detail. That and it is one huge pearl for only two strokes. We got to see other famous Dutch artist as well, but that was the highlight of the museum.
We then jumped on a tram and made our way out to Zoetermeer where we spent some time browsing a supermarket for lunch. I totally indulged in my cheese fetish and Chante admitted her fetish was bread, so we picked up a really great loaf and sat in the local park talking and eating for two hours. After that wandered around looking for the temple, and found it just in time to start a session which we both promptly slept through most of it because of our jet lag. We then returned back to our hotel where we found a great cafe to have a traditional dinner of frites and crispy mash beef followed by the biggest ice cream waffle creation. Somehow it ended up being 11pm by the time we hit the hay.

The next day was the reason we came to the Netherlands. The Kekeunof and the flower parade! We left the Hague and to the train back to the airport where I would interrupt Chante and say "Oooh look at the flowers!" From the airport we stood in an hour line to get on a bus to go to the Kekeunof once there it was mobs and mobs of people so we thought to find a place for the parade. After standing for two hours and the parade still hadn't come (it's route started nearly out by the Hague and ended in a suburb of Amsterdam) There was no crowd control and it seemed to be ran by people who were in their early twenties and this was the first time they had ever done this. It was funny to see the Dutch/ Germans get upset when the Asians would get in front of them because they would make this deep heckling growl. The Asians were completely insane because the would break the barriers and run into the road and would not move even if there was a tourist bus trying to get through the line. I was afraid we wouldn't get into the park so we decided to leave the parade and go to the park.

The Kekeunof is not what you think it is. You think you are going to see tulip fields going on forever, but actually it is more like Disneyland for flowers. Flowers in all sorts of creations and rows. Informational buildings dedicated to certain species of flowers. All very good and wonderful, but I wanted to be blown away by so many flowers that my head would explode, so we ditched the gardens to find the fields (which we saw in the park and spent twenty minutes trying to get there and over the mini river). The fields were incredible and you it was fun to walk around them and see how everyone acted. Once we were finished I found more frites to eat and we sat in a two hour line to get back to the airport. We heard that a million people come to see the parade (which I didn't get to see) and 700,000 were in the Kekeunof area. It was a lot of waiting and Chante and I realized that we had spent most of our day waiting in a line. Once we got to the airport we lucked out and our hotel was in the airport so we fixed our travel arrangements home, bought some candy with our coins and went to bed.