Sinterklaas!

Today I met up with Jamie and her friend visiting from America and we spent the day in Amsterdam. It's about a half hour train ride from Hilversum. Today happened to be the day Sinterklaas (Santa claus) arrives on a ship from Spain. We first saw his helpers, Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) scaling buildings and making their way down to the ground.



As we continued walking, we came upon a square where tons of the Zwarte Piets were running around, chasing children and playing games.



We even had a Zwarte Piet jump out of a bus and try and scare us. We just laughed. We continued on and made our way to the Van Gogh Museum. It was great taking the time to look at all his paintings and influences in his life. He really seemed to be admired and loved by his friends and family. As we were walking back toward the center of town we ran into the Sinterklaas parade, where we saw Santa and his helpers and a bunch of random people dressed up come through on horses. This is a shot of Sinterklaas, he looked more like a pope than anything.



From here we just wandered around, saw lots of wooden shoes, Heineken, prostitutes, weed, canals. The usual.



It was a nice day and it's so great that I can catch a train and travel to so many places in such a short amount of time. Tomorrow I begin my "real" first day of work since the bosses will actually be there.

Jamie and I, the interns…