New Years Eve in Amsterdam

We had decided to have a quiet day today. We had gone for a walk and enjoyed another outing of ice skating. Well the kids did anyway. After the Paris experience this was one thing they were really keen to give another go. The rink at Leidseplain Square is a very beautiful place with many cafes and shops. Unfortunately the rink was being run by what could only be called cowboys who had little regard for those using it. After the highly organised rink in Paris this caught me by surprise. No one watched the rink for safety and the guys running it seemed to have little interest in customer service.

It was about this time I started to realise using a credit card was not as easy as in other countries. Apparently few dutch people have a credit card and most super markets and food outlets don't take them. We had exchanged a few hundred Euro before leaving the UK but had found the credit card easier to use and had tried to use up the cash thinking we didn't wont to get stuck with it. That back fired as we had to use our credit card at an cash machine three times to pay the bills. Its an expensive way to do it. Only one supermarket in Amsterdam takes a credit card had has a number of stores called "Dirk van den Broek". Good to know for the future.

Still we settled down in one of the outdoor cafes and enjoyed watching the kids fly around. From about 10.30am there had been a number of loud explosions. They went off periodically and from every direction. By the evening it was relentless and sounded like we were in a war zone. I had never heard anything like it. They weren't the usual type of crackers but really big sounding ones. they also had what we used to call tom thumbs but only bigger.

By 11pm it was constant and from multiple directions. It lasted about another three hours. How anyone slept I have no idea, well actually the kids seemed undisturbed. I heard that 70 000 Dutch people were admitted to hospital that day which doesn't surprise me. I have been in Singapore over the Chinese new year which had massive public displays but this was something else and quite staggering.