There’s not a sane chronology to this one, it’s more impressionistic or categorical; I like to think of it as being like a Van Gogh piece if he had a camera and no talent.
Friday was a ‘wandering around’ day. No particular agenda beyond ‘where does this road go?’ or ‘what is that thing over there?
The one thing I did do with any form of plan was to get an orange hat, because that’s important for Kingsday, though my choice of a hat with no text but a little Dutch flag may have been a poor one, as someone immediately thought I was Dutch; I was just avoiding the ones with Amsterdam or Holland plastered all over them.
The main thoroughfares got crowded & slow pretty quickly, which isn’t much fun, but I had better luck with the smaller streets & canals; There were still crowds, but not the slow immobile sort where nobody can go anywhere. The vibe was very much a citywide street party, so as you walk you pass by & through gatherings on bridges or at intersections or sometimes just outside someone’s house, usually with music, sometimes with a DJ. Pretty sure there were people singing along to Yellow Submarine down one alleyway.
On the canals there were a bunch of boats with the same sort of thing; I didn’t see anyone fall overboard, but given the number of people and the alcohol it must happen.
In NZ or the UK, I’d have expected some angry & aggressive drunks, but didn’t see any of that. People being a bit oblivious, yes, but nothing bad. I’ll give a special shout-out to the guys who were towing a cargo bike with an electric bike, and took this assemblage onto the ferry. It was, from what I saw, a bunch of people having a nice time.
I wandered through a part of the/a red light district at one point by ducking down an alleyway which seemed less crowded than the street ahead. Was confused by a guy laughingly chasing a young teenager? away, until I saw the windows & lights & signage further up the alley, at which point it kinda made sense. No real difference to the Kingsday vibe, to be fair, just a different backdrop to the street party.
For the first time I wasn’t the last one in the dorm of four to get back. Venezuelan guy got back sometime before 10, was apologetically drunk, then left again, and NZ guy appeared at some point after that.