Day 5 (King's Day)

Another glorious day was on deck today. Today was King’s day. A common theme throughout the day was: the colour orange. Often seen representing many Dutch Sports teams and the like, the colour was definitely omnipresent throughout the day. The preparations for the night’s events had begun. Everywhere we went we were greeted by smiling faces. The events didn’t start until late at night so we decided to do some touring around the city once again. We had a supper invitation to the corporate manager’s house today for 18h00. We didn’t want to be late for that. 

We spent much of our morning at the exciting Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was a wondrous gallery with many different paintings and pieces alike. A very interesting trip it was, to say the least. We also decided to have some more food on our list of foods we needed to try. Although somewhat of a snack food, we decided to go for an all out Bitterballen for lunch. Bitterballen are deep-fried balls coated in a crunchy breadcrumb mixture and filled with hot and savoury beef, beef broth, herbs spices, and many other fillings. We decided to go traditional and go for the regular beef-filled balls. They were very good, and this time time I can’t

really find to much of a comparison to any Canadian food. Maybe a jelly-filled Timbit, that has a savoury soup on the inside? I really don’t know. As a side note, it is a good idea to take caution when eating them. The soup inside is very hot, especially when you get it served. Gio found it out the hard way after burning his tongue on the hot, fried Bitterballen. He said part of his tongue was numb and that the sour mustard sauce served with the the Bitterballen hurt his tongue. Bad news aside, it wasn’t anything life-threatening and should heal in a few days.

After all of our morning travels, it was already 14h00. We decided to just go back to the hotel and relax and not be late for the supper. It was a pretty calm and quiet afternoon, with nothing too crazy going on. We really needed to get dialed in for the night’s festivities. 

We left the hotel at around 17h00 and arrived at his house at around 17h40. We were greeted by him and welcomed into his house. It was a rather large house that was decorated in a more traditional type of way. He introduced us tot his wife and 2 kids. When we arrived dinner was almost prepared and we got in a few business words, before it would be all about enjoying ourselves at dinner. The dinner was just the four of us (him and his wife), his children were picked up by their uncle to go to the movies. The table was piled with foods like Snert, Stamppot, and Kapucijnerschote. It was all quite delicious and were then treated to desert. Dessert included a wide variety of Dutch deserts: Limburgse Vlaai and Stroopwafels. I must say my favourite dish was the Limburgse Vlaai. It is a sweet Dutch dish is thinner than most pies we know of and ours was filled with a delicious apricot-cherry filling. 

Dessert











With the dining done for the day, we accompanied the manager for a night’s celebration; just the three of us. He brought us to the Melkweg (Milky Way) one of Amsterdam’s best entertainment venues located in the heart of the city. It was an amazing with many great times had. Many different bands including Goldfish, Yellow Claw and Joris Voorn, were playing that night and it was overall a very cultural and modern experience. Our event ended at around 2h00 in the morning and it was a good thing neither of us had to work the next day because we were extremely tired after.

We took a taxi home and hoped for an equally exciting day tomorrow.


Carl Turner