Thursday 11 January 2024

Looking at the news this morning – all is well in Europe. The German train drivers are on a three day strike for reduced hours, pay increase (about $600 a month) and a one off ‘inflation payment’ of €3,000. I wonder what the nurses, police and rocket scientists want? As a result, we now have to buy a flight to Copenhagen as the trains aren’t running.

The French are also demanding pay increases because of the Olympics. Police and security, front line and medicos all have their hands out. The Paris mayor says she will swim in the Seine to prove it’s clean enough to hold swimming events there but they still have to fix hundreds of sewer and stormwater connections. The President says there is no plan B, or C or D, for the opening ceremony along the river. But - and get this, someone on the Paris IOC says that maybe the flotilla will not have any athletes but “performers”.

Oh yes, here in Amsterdam, the government is closing all the souvenir stalls because of organised crime.

Our Mary becomes Queen this weekend. And whoopy do, Bulgaria and Romania have joined Schengen. It’s all go here!

A big day today 12,200 steps and the weather is a balmy 3c. We went to he Het Schip Amsterdam School (of architecture) to see the Michel de Klerk exhibition and all the buildings he designed there in the early 1900’s. We were offered a guided tour, but in Dutch.

Well, Flashy knows that the closest European language to English is Dutch, so why not?

We joined three well dressed ladies about our vintage and another bloke to make up six of us. The guide was a very smart twenty something bottle blonde who could rattle off Dutch like nobody’s business, then instantly go to perfect English at 200 words per minute. What a remarkable young lass. The Dutchies took pity on us and told the guide to just do the tour in English. They also spoke very good English, so we had a ball.

Lady P in heaven of course, with all the interiors, furnishings and the actual buildings to go in and out of. She’ll have all the correct explanations and photos on her FindPenguins.

Lunch of croquets and soup in a Dutch local café, then walking through Haarlem and the red light district to another bar.

The girls in the windows were buxom and scantily clad as you would imagine. Sorry, no photos - it’s a €145 fine for taking one. I did notice as we passed, that tattoos are all the go in the district and I think one of the ‘girls’ was probably not a girl at birth, but as you know I only took a brief glimpse as we passed.

Refuge is now taken in another bar for a glühwein and a merlot before we tram it home tour apartment.

Bread is solid. Doesn't toast well.












Croquettes at last!










Comments

  1. Jo11 January 2024 at 22:52

    Good looking croquettes 😋

    ReplyDelete
  2. Graeme13 January 2024 at 18:01

    I do enjoy a good croquette and that is the best food photo so far.

    ReplyDelete

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