My niece mentioned she would be traveling to Amsterdam for King's Day this year, so my sister and I decided to check out flights and see if we could make it work too. As luck would have it, we found some flights and the timing fit into our work schedules, so we started making plans! King's Day is a national holiday in the Netherlands that celebrates the King's birthday, and parties/festivals are held throughout the country. The biggest one happens in Amsterdam and there are usually more than 500,000 visitors coming into the city that day. Sounded like a fun party! I'm always going to jump at the chance to spend more time in the Netherlands, and considering it was also tulip season, it was an easy decision.
We stayed at Hotel Zoku, which is a funky apartment-style hotel in the middle of the city. The rooms were eclectic, but had little kitchen setups and were fine for just the two of us.
We walked around the city for a while after checking in, and made a stop at Stroopperie to get a sweet treat.
The next day we made our way to the city of Gouda to check out the cheese market. What was going on in the main square was mainly ceremonial, but you could go into stores and see the vast display of cheese varieties. We did some taste testing and wished we could have brought back all the different varieties of Gouda home! We also saw a vending machine for Stroopwafels, which made sense because Gouda is the birthplace of this famous Dutch dessert.
On the way back to Amsterdam, we stopped in Utrecht to do some shopping and visit with our cousin's girlfriend who worked at a store there. Back at the hotel, we went up to the convenient bar/restaurant on the top floor, with a beautiful, lush walkway leading to it. We sat at a booth that had a funny message next to it.
We laughed at that and wondered how often it happened. Well, sure enough, within a few minutes, the alarm went off and their staff jumped into action. We moved out of the way so they could reach their walkie talkies and safety vests. Apparently someone had left something on the stove and it caused the smoke alarm to go off. Glad to see the staff had a plan to handle that, and there was no fire, so we were able to get back to our dinner quickly!
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