THE CELEBRATIONS

We head up to leidesplein and check out some places for food. We have some delicious Chinese with some on-the-house champagne [thankyou mr. manager of tan-oh chinese at leidespleein - it was yum!] amongst some 10,000 firecrackers blasting rite next to us! :-) We head off to dam square, where we become one with the people with red hats and get armed with some heinekein!

The tunes vary from really fanstastic memories of 2005 to really dutch pop to tunes which were well beyond Chris and my time! but overall, it was good to watch the crowd, dance to the music and see random fireworks before the countdown. Nearer to midnight, the stage was taken over by a team of fire dancers who were pretty cool and did their stunts to chemical brokers- firestarter!

At midnight, the sky went red - scarletly bright and we were bathed in champagne and confetti, which I we were picking off our clothes for days! :-D

lots of fireworks went off, but this wasnt much of the organized fireworks you see in the UK. Here, you are allowed to buy as many fireworks as you possibly can and my highlight was indeed Chris saying: 'I have never been INSIDE a firework display!'

It was cool. We followed the loud sounds and bright colours of the fireworks as they progressed from street to street, canal to canal throught the different parts of the centruum, got confused at Nieuw Market(!) which looked riot-ish and went back to leidespleein.

The rest of the night was spent in Cafe Alto were we chilled out to some Jazz. We walked back to the hotel via the different streets again at around 3-4 am to get our early night! ;-)