Queensday 2012

Yesterday it was Queensday, the day our queen celebrates her birthday.

We went to the traditional 'Freemarket', a large open air flea market where there's lots of stuff for sale.
It's called a 'Freemarket' because you don't have to pay a fee to have a stall there.)

I found a new friend at the market!

And we had a really tasty snack: bread with goat cheese, walnuts and honey.

In the evening we went to the movies.
We saw The Hunger Games. I read the book and liked it, so was very curious about the movie. It turned out to be a fun and cool movie.

A Trip to Eelde

Today we went to a Flea-Market in Eelde.
We still need some new lamps for our home and as my owner had been to that flea-market in the past and they had lots of lamps and stuff like that, we hoped we could find some lamps today.

There were lots of weird things on sale, like these two mummy penguins statue thingies, but..... no lamps. Well, not nice ones anyway.

So we went back to the bus station for our trip back to Groningen without new lamps.



In the bus there was a screen that listed all the bus stops, so I could see how many stops we had to go until we got to Groningen.

And this is what we did find and bought: a metal owl bookmark!

Market Day

Today we visited the market.
I love the market as there's so much to see.

There's all kinds of yummie things like cheese...

Pumpkins...
(I know where we'll be getting our pumpkins for Halloween.)

Nuts of all kinds...

and Mushrooms.
Just to name a view of all the delicious things they have on the market.

There's also creepy things to see on the market like these crabs...

All kinds of fish...

And even Cthulhu Spawn!!
I hope Cthulhu never finds out or he might visit the market and that's not going to be pleasant.

All in all the market is a fun place to visit.

Queen's Day

Today it was Queen's Day, the day the Dutch celebrate the birthday of the queen.

There's always a big open market on Queen's Day and as we want to declutter our house a bit as we have to move house temporarily in July for the renovation we decided to try and sell some of our excess stuff, like old books and such.

I kept an eye on everyone who passed to make sure no one ran off without paying.

And there were lots of people walking by so I was pretty busy all day.

But I also had time for a few short breaks and in one of my breaks I looked around a bit.

This Jeep and the truck in the last picture were army vehicles! There were people from the army to give demonstrations and tell people a bit about the army.

I also met this nice lady, who was dressed in a tradional costume and was making wooden clogs!

We did manage to sell lots of our stuff and we then celebrated it by spending our well deserved money by going to our favourite restaurant!

It was a great Queen's Day!!

A Beautiful Day turned Sour

Today it was Queen's Day, the day that we celebrate the birthday of Queen Beatrix, queen of the Netherlands. Some of you may have seen the news and know what happened today, but before going into that I want to share the good things of today with you.

My owner's boss at the catering service also owns a clothing shop, so we started today with a visit to her shop. She has lots of pretty dresses there.

Next we went to the 'Vrijmarkt' (free/open market) in Groningen. It's a kind of really large outdoor fleamarket, where everyone who wants to can sell stuff without having to get a permit. It's held all over the Netherlands at Queen's Day. We saw lots of junk and also cool stuff. As you see the weather was lovely and there were lots of people all in a festive mood because of Queen's Day.

There was a woman selling these pretty balloons.

Chinese Lantern Art.

When we got hungry from all the walking around at the fleamarket we bought something to eat: 'Patat' (french fries, but these are a bit bigger). We had mayonaise, ketchup and onions with it. Delicious!



We had planned to do lots more today, like going to a Celtic Market, but then we got a sad message from my owner's OH, which put a stop to our plans:

There had been an attack on the queen and her family.
As is usual on Queen's Day, our queen was visiting a city to join in the celebrations of this day. As she and her family were in an open bus on their way to the next location they would visit, a car actually ploughed through the cheering crowd in an attempt to hit the bus. It killed four people and wounded 17 more before it crashed into a monument, missing the bus.
After hearing this news we didn't feel like celebrating anymore, so we went home.

I feel very sad that something like this happened, especially on a day when everyone should be happy and celebrating. I wasn't sure at first if I should post my pictures of today, but I think it's important to share the good things of a day like today even if it all ended so terribly sad.