Queen’s Day in Amsterdam

Queen’s Day is a weekend of extravagance in Amsterdam. Concerts, orange shirts, beers and garbage sprawled across the streets. It is a moment of tremendous frivolity, much aided by the glorious sunny weather on this weekend. On this trip, I was spoiled by two ‘different’ events:
(1) being the very first passenger for my taxi driver (a rather portly, if nervous, Pakistani) who took me from Schiphol airport to my hotel (passing through a very dense and rowdy crowd).
How many times in one’s life is one a taxi driver’s first ever passenger? He was very well intentioned and discrete.
(2) a lucky find. My elegant wrist watch malfunctioned over the weekend so I was quite disappointed about the prospect of having to fix it… when I stepped out of the cab (mentioned above), I looked down and found a brand new Fossil watch. Although not exactly the same calibre as my regular watch, I can only say I felt little remorse in picking it up out of the trash lying on the floor. I would not have been nearly as content, I believe, had my real watch not been on the blinker. Such is the serendipity.