"Pimp My Praam"

Well, I now know what a praam is.
It is a flat, shallow boat w/ a motor on the back. Nothing fancy but quite nice.

I started my day w/ a bike ride (the first on my lovely new bike) with Richard (Dutch). We were trying to find the forest of Amsterdam. Yes, indeed, there is an honest to goodness real live forest just on the outskirts of the city--who knew? Neither of us had been there, but Richard knew around where it was. We set out with high hopes. We were happily riding along when we suddenly discovered that we had somehow ridden in a circle (actually not hard to do here since the canals are all half-moon shaped). We were laughing at ourselves since neither of us realized what we had done until it was time for us to head back to De Poort....I guess I will see the forest another day.

We (all September dts staff...see an earlier blog for description of the 8 of us) got to Richard's parent's house and Richard gave us a tour. They live in a quaint house (as are ALL the houses in Holland) in the midst of a beautiful flower garden. Behind the house are greenhouses where Richard's father has been growing flowers for somewhere around 30 years now (and his father grew them before him). Most of the flowers they grow are sold to the United States (I do not know the English word for what type they are). The town of Alsmeer is where a world flower auction is held, so the town is just bursting with flowers of every kind.
After a nice ride around in the praam then relaxing on a little island (man-made...no beach...looks like a nice, garden backyard area) we went into Alsmeer to view the flower parade.
All the floats were decorated with tons and tons of flowers...very beautiful.

Tomorrow night, the town will have a "pimp my praam" competition where people will decorate their praam w/ a theme then drive them in a parade to be judged. Richard and his friends are decorating his boat w/a disco theme. Interesting.