Flea market Heaven

One of the few things we miss in Turkey are flea markets. We have feed our hunger for them by going to a few of them these days.

With some good finding and matching you can decorate your home completely from the flea market, unique, cheap and gorgeous, if you ask me.

I always love how those weird things and combinations of all kind of things somehow match nicely together.

Oh and yes we have an excess luggage problem, as our shopping brakes refused to work :)

Alice in Amsterdam

We went to the movies yesterday evening. The reason to share this is because of the amazing cinema we went to. Tuschinski theater is an amazing piece of Architectural art.

Originally exploited by Abraham Icek Tuschinski, who had it built in 1921 at a cost of 4 million guilders, in a spectacular mix of styles, as designed by Hijman Louis de Jong; Amsterdam School, Jugendstil, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The main auditorium is usually the one in which movies premiere in the Netherlands.
The façade, in its own style of Art Deco with oriental influences, was designed to help people get a feeling that they were being led into an illusion. The main auditorium was originally not designed just as a movie theatre and still has a stage and organ, on which performances are still given. (information from wikipedia)

The interior is amazing, especially love all the different kind of lampshades.

Between 1998 and 2002 the Theater was closed for a huge renovation.

The atmosphere is wonderful, like a warm and luxorious living room.

If you ever visit Amsterdam make sure to visit Tuschinski, but do make sure to go to a movie which plays in Salon 1, 2 or 3 as those are the original old ones. There is an new wing attached to the cinema and the salons are modern and boring there.

Where ever you look, the details are breathtaking.

And we went from one wonder....

...to Wonderland....

Messy Amsterdam

We had planned to blog more during our time here but our own errands and everything around us has kept us occupied. We arrived at such a messy time in Amsterdam this time. We arrived at queens day (April 30th) which already was a mess.
2 days before departure I couldn't find my ID card, our reason to go to Holland was renewing our ID's and passports. I went 5 times to the police for it (3 in Turkey, 2 in Holland), I guess I have had enough police visits for a long time (hopefully).



4 May is the day the death of the Second World War are remembered. That day every year at 8p.m. the Queen and royal family go to the Dam square in Amsterdam to put flowers at the memorial statue. Thousands of people come too and traffic is closed for hours in the centre of Amsterdam. A 2 minute silence for the millions of death is the reason they gather. This year someone fainted in those 2 minutes and fell on the metal barracks which gave a hard sound and everyone got in panic, luckely it was soon clear that nothing was going on and they continued (the Royal family was taken away right away for safety).

The 5th of May 1945 was the day that the Netherland was liberated from the German forces, every year freedom is celebrated on that day.

Between all these unusual days, the garbage men are on strike for more then a week now and garbage is starting to overflow everywhere.

8-9-10 May the town will be a mess due to the cycle race, Giro d'Italia.

Thursday 13th of May will be Acsension day, so many places will be closed.

I'm surprised at how many unusual days and events we are having these two weeks, not to forget that it is the coldest may in Holland since 1978, around 10 celsius, rainy and grey. It does show us why we left this country :)

Monday Moodboard and Etsy Friends

1. ThongbaiTatong 2. SwiedeBie 3. Martice 4. PiniPiru

Yesterday we met some Etsy friends on a fair. They are all so kind and sweet! So this week's moodboard is with some of those friends.
See more moodboards at FleurFatale's blog!



SwiedeBie with her super sweet pink table, just like herself :)

ThongbaiTatong and SwiedeBie

Mum, Bai (ThongbaiTatong), me and Swee (SwiedeBie).



Everyone was admiring ThongbaiTatong's gorgeous skirts.

Big bummer was that the weather was super cold and wet, so some of the girls were freezing outside...



Martice and Paperfection. They were outside but had a sunny table and faces :)

Another sweet Etsier who we met there was PinuPiru:

Liesbeth (PiniPiru), Marta (Martice), Elzeline (Paperfection), mum and me.

It was super fun to see these girls in real and also to see their creations!!

Queensday

We arrived in Amsterdam on queen's day. There have been queens (no kings) in Holland

for four generations now and queen's day is the queen's birthday. April 30th is actually the previous queen's birthday, but stayed that way after Beatrix's coronation 30 years ago as an honor to her mother and also because her own birthday is in january, too cold to celebrate.

Queen's day is a big thing in Holland. There is the free market to start with, everybody is allowed to sell anything on the street. Almost everyone is wearing something orange, the color of the royal Dutch family.

Alot of people go to Amsterdam to celebrate, most streets are closed for trafic so that people can just walk, dance and drink everywhere.

We were surprised about the amount of alcohol, the way of celebration changed during the past 15 years, back in the day it was mostly selling stuff, Amsterdam became a huge flea market. But now most people were selling food and everyone was drinking.


Always a weird thing from Amsterdam: the guys toilets. Due to the huge amount of beer there were also many of these toilets everywhere. They love chatting while having a leak.

Garbage was everywhere, mostly beer cans.


Today many people were working on get the city a bit clean again...

We were too tired to enjoy much of it as we went straight from the airport to the activities.

Tomorrow we'll meet up with some Etsy friends, looking forward to that!