Having just arrived back in Amsterdam after 2 weeks travelling over Christmas, we were pretty tired but still excited to be spending new years (or Oud en Nieuw as it is called in Dutch) with our friends in Almere. It was a really nice evening spent in their newly purchased and renovated house.
One of the highlights of the night was the fireworks. In Australia it is illegal to have fireworks so it is not something I have grown up with, but in the Netherlands it is legal to buy them in the few days leading up to New Year's Eve, and to set them of from 2pm to 2am on New Year's itself. We were on a flight back from Switzerland at around 4pm and as the plane was approaching Amsterdam, we could see flashes from the fireworks across the country.
The loud explosions grew increasingly close together as we approached midnight. At around 11:30, we went outside to let a few of ourselves that Roeland had got for us. We then went back up to the top floor of their house where we had an incredible view of the fireworks which were going off constantly in every direction, even from the street just a few metres below us. While the display was much smaller and not choreographed like the major displays put on by Australian cities, it made up for this with sheer persistence as the fireworks continued well past 1am.
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| Aftermath of the fireworks on the street the next morning |
