Liberation Day in Amsterdam.

interrupted by a heavy rain and thunderstorm in the middle of the day, it was mainly a festive day. At this moment the day is nearing the public concert of the National Youth Orchestra, playing on a bridge over the Amstel, and there will be ballet dancers dancing below the orchestra. The  King, his mother, the former queen Beatrix and the actual queen are present, as well as many invited guests are in assisting on a tribune next to the orchestra, and the concert , of which we heard the rehearsal this afternoon, has started now. There are thousands of people standing alongside the water since many hours. The sun is slowly going down and the atmosphere is magical. I am having the whole thing on tv, as I am way too tired to stand for hours in that crowd and it is cold too.
I will add some pics from tv go give you an impression.
The pic that I choose for today was fascinating because it represented for me a lot of the relaxed dutch way of dealing with such public events.
There were many, many police officers standing all around this spot on both borders , in boats on the water , but there were also big house boats, with all their plants on board, (that might have been checked beforehand) All officer were friendly, allowed me to take pictures of them.
I grew up in Holland. I still like many of their ways a lot. 

I spent the day with my longest and best friend from highschool in Holland. We took a ferry over het IJ and spent a lot of time above the water watching the traffic of boats in the harbor. A delightful mixture of old buildings, boats and modern boats - of course - and very modern buildings, as you can see in the last added picture. The night pic of the concert is taken from the tv.

In the end the King and Queen were singing along with the audience...