Amsterdam Pride

Conversation taking place at the gay pride parade last Saturday:

Me: “You know you live in a great country (and work for a cool company) when your company not only lets you advertise with big rainbow signs, gay pride weekend, but hands out little pink cookies with coffee in the morning.”

Partner of gay colleague: “You know you live in a cool country when the government subsidizes prostitution for ugly people.”

Needless to say, he won that point. However, P. did explain in a bit more detail that while this is true, it applies to handicapped or disfigured people. Still…

Click here for more pics from the gay pride parade last Saturday. Coolest aspect, beyond the wild drag outfits, the parade takes place on boats on the Prinsengracht canal.

The weather was beautiful this weekend. But my stupid ass completely forgets to put on sunscreen. I think I forgot what the sun looked like (note – any day here could be fall, summer, Seattle…you never know). Anyhoo, I also wore my pretty Murano necklace I bought in Venice that protected the perfect medallion size circle on my chest while the rest of me turned bright pink. So now I have this nice tan with a white circle in the middle of my chest. D’oh.

On Sunday, everyone headed to the beach in gridlock traffic, some never even making it to the beach. P. and I, unbeknownst to us, were super smart and headed in the opposite direction to a theme park as we’re both roller coaster fans. It was so much fun – a gorgeous day (note – I smeared on the 30+ sunscreen all day) and NO LINES longer than 15 minutes, which made it the perfect theme park day.

Our plan was to stop in Amersfoort on the way back home as I had to head to Amsterdam and P. to Enschede and on the way, we decided spontaneously to see if we could find our new house. We snuck onto the construction site (apparently other people had been doing this, because we received a letter asking us not to do precisely that). BUT, "W"hatever - we own the land now and well, it helped that all the construction workers across Holland take the same 3-week vacation each summer, so everyone was long gone. I’m sure this isn’t exciting to anyone but P. and me, but it was so cool to be standing (we got in through an open window) in what will be our new house one day soon. It was a really good feeling and got us both excited about the future. Here’s some pics – ours is the one behind the big green cement mixer.