Thursday Holland celebrated the Queen's birthday with a free day. This means anyone is free to sell their things (noncommercial) anywhere. So people sell food, their personal belongings, kids perform music and acts to make money, you can pet a dog for a euro, anything you can think of! The photos below are from Amsterdam. Every street in the city was like a market with people selling their stuff row after row it never ended. And don't forget to wear orange!
Boats going through the canals partying. You can also see all the poeple walking on the streets.
Goodies
These people bought some big stuff that they now need to haul back home on their bikes
Vondel Park, a place to relax and get out of the madness although it was still quite mad here as well.
And you can't celebrate without eating poffertjes! They're mini pancakes with powdered sugar sprinkled on. A bit like funnel cake.
Dogs in orange tutus
These guys are selling bike tires. I wonder how many bikes they stole to profit off of these. After the photo we quickly saw the police approaching.
My last weekend in Europe, before returning to the states, was spent in Gent, Belgium. John and I met up with his friend Joeri and Joeri's girlfriend, Marie, who lives in Gent. Gent was a wonderful city to be in, it's an interesting difference between Holland and Belgium. First of all the houses are much skinnier and taller, and also the architecture laws are different so many of the original old buildings are being replaced with new modern looks. Something I think they will regret in the future. They also do not restore there old buildings as much. For example, we were in the upstairs of a bar Saturday evening and we could look through the floorboards and see the people downstairs. Kind of scary!
Really nice graffiti on the way to town
Two of the four churches next to each other
Check out the tiny house between the big ones!
Part of the castle
The Belgian waffle guy. Delicious!
Marie and Joeri enjoying waffles
Gent was also known for their textile industry. This is a shop window of wallpaper. Look how amazing the patterns are.
Walking to the trainstation you see these two houses. They are mirror images of each. One has been kept up really well and the other is totally falling apart. 
