Day 415: Hot Dam

13/09/2022

Monday morning started at the Post Office, Eloise was excited to be picking up her new tap dance shoes.

Eloise had to ring her Great Nanny straight away to show off her “noisy shoes”.

The kids had been waiting for Dad to get home, it has felt like a long time away by all. Although time flies when you are shopping.

As soon as I finished work it was a quick call home so Eloise could show off her tap dance skills, although Lachlan stole the show with his Glaswegian Flamenco.

After finally digesting the family-sized pizza, we were all looking forward to tonight’s dinner on Prinses Juliana, a floating wooden ship.

Tonight’s episode of Sewing with Sophie was remote, with a new dance bag in the works.

We hope you are all enjoying our six-day late news updates regarding the Queen. Not sure what it was like in Australia, but all media sources in the UK have turned to Monarchy watch. Not going to lie, FIK has been overrun with headlines.

Monarchy watch:

• “Mourners queue all night to see Queen’s coffin in Edinburgh”.
• “Thousands of people watched in near-silence as the Queen’s coffin made its journey up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. The Queen’s children, led by King Charles III, walked behind the hearse as it drove from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles’ Cathedral”.
• “King speaks of ‘great admiration’ for Scotland in Holyrood address”.

Tuesday morning, the kids smashed their breakfast, Eloise is doing a great job at teaching her brother new tricks. With Dad still away it was all hands on deck to help with the shopping. First Eloise pushed Lachlan before he returned the favour.

Our flights from Aalborg to Amsterdam were cancelled, luckily we managed to sneak on the earlier one and flew out in the afternoon. Unfortunately, this led to a seven-hour wait at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Mmm, high risk, high reward, we dashed into the city for a look-see, Nathan had not been before, so it was going to be a rapid tour.

We caught the train and metro into the city near Rijksmuseum, a lovely building, I think it was a tad overrated inside, it’s got nothing on free UK museums.

It was a cracking day, sure beat sitting in the airport. There were even more bikes in Amsterdam (click here for mini Sophie riding in Amsterdam in 2019), we were a little overwhelmed crossing the streets at times. We did notice a couple of fellow Bromptoners and gave them an appreciation nod.

The local lads fought through peletons, over the canals and into the heart of the city. Nathan was on a mission, and that mission included “chippies”, or as Curious George calls it “a Glaswegian salad”. The line for the chippies was long enough that we had to queue all the way back to the cookie store, it would have just been rude not to grab one while we were there.

We eventually made it into Fabel Friet, I wish I had caught a photo of Nathan’s face, he had an even larger grin than when he calculates Fourier transforms.

We crawled into the city centre, back to the Royal Palace Amsterdam.

Nathan was a man possessed and led us to van Wonderen Stroopwafels, I could not keep up, he kindly purchased one for Super Mum.

Not wanting to push our luck we made it to Amsterdam Centraal station and headed back to the airport.

After a bit of toing and froing, it was then another midnight arrival home, although this time I was here for good. Unfortunately, Eloise was crook, but this did mean I got to read her a midnight book and she had not forgotten about her souvenir. We also had our third guest Tom move into Hotel FIK.

Monarchy watch:

• “Crowds line streets as Queen’s coffin makes final Scottish journey… About 33,000 people had filed past the coffin in the cathedral, with thousands queuing through the night for the chance to pay their respects”.
• “Final flight of Queen Elizabeth II sets all-time flight tracking record. The Royal Air Force flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin from Edinburgh to RAF Northolt near London set an all-time flight tracking record on Flightradar24 with 5 million people following along”.
• “The Queen’s children and grandchildren greeted her coffin on its arrival at Buckingham Palace”.