We’ve been to visit Fi, Wim and Stephanie in their new house in Amsterdam. The girls loved playing with each other, the dads loved sitting in brown bars drinking Belgian beer, and the mums probably had a good time too.
On the Sunday we watched the arrival of Sinterklaas by boat from Spain into Amsterdam (well, we didn’t get up early enough to see the actual flotilla, but we caught the subsequent parade), accompanied by his black helper Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) – a slave dealer who carts all the naughty children off to Africa in his sack once he’s emptied it of sweets, and sells them into slavery. I don’t think you can see hundreds of city employees black up with Afro wigs and lipstick anywhere else apart from Holland.
Father Christmas was pretty good though.
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The full photo album is here.
[...] rained so much we skipped the traditional parade of blacked-up city employees, and hid in the library instead. Julia was over from Canada so we caught up with her and Steef as [...]