Adventure of the month

Orange bitter liquor...it's what's for breakfast Clock him with an egg and win 20 euro April 30th is the day when the Dutch (and the tourists that love them) manage to outdo the usual everyday bacchanalia that is Amsterdam. Ostensibly, it is the celebration of the Queen's birthday (although it is actually the birthday of her mother, since the current Queen pragmatically realized that changing the holiday to her actual birthday in December would probably put a damper any outdoor celebrations and had the good sense to leave well enough alone). So now as before, in springtime, everyone dresses up in orange (the royal family is known as the House of Orange), drinks orange liquor, walks arounds streets strewn in orange debris and in general sleeps off an orange hangover come May 1st. Or was that just me?

Once again, it looks like I will be spending most of my summer in the ultra-cool city of Amsterdam, only difference is that this year, I made it in time to see the much heralded tulips. They are gorgeous, they are amazingly colorful and they are simply everywhere. Yet even with this level of omnipresence, I have calculated that there has got to be a 5 tourists to 1 tulip ratio at play. Hotels are all booked solid, tour busses are clogging every street and may the gods help you if you decide to take a city bus to the Keukenhof , the world's most famous flower garden. It is tulip mania around here. I have posted a small percentage (seriously!!) of the photos I took at the flower parade and the garden itself to show why people from all over the world are flocking for flowers.

Waiting for the Marriott crew ( with JR in the background) Caribelle Batik Shop at Romney Manor (closed on Sundays) Lily, Israel, Shawn, Martha and Betty at Romney Manor Brimstone Hill Fortress Mami and Maggie at Brimstone Rawlins Plantation Black Rocks My mother and her ass . Final day in St. Kitts, we decided we may as well see St. Kitts. We had explored the more upscale sister island, Nevis, we had gone deep into the rain forest, we had hit every bar along the Frigate Bay strip, some of them twice, but we had not actually driven around the island we were staying on. Due to the previous evening's van-related fiasco, the driving would now actually be done by JR aka Robert, a cab driver we had met the first day on the island and my brother would follow with the Marriott crew in his rental car. After some initial difficulties in meeting up, due mainly to the fact that my mother was given the actual meeting time, as opposed to a fictitious much earlier start tim...