3rd October

This week the main annual festival in Leiden has been held. Dutch were celebrating Spanish left the country after the War of the Eighty Years and we Spanish celebrated we moved to a warmer and nicer country ;-)

Well, the thing is Leiden become a chaos in terms of transportation, sleeping at night, etc... but gained quite a lot in night life! The "big night" was from Tuesday to Wednesday and we started with a birthday party at Paula's home. The birthdays we were celebrating were Ana's and Paula's, my fellow Spanish Trainees at ESTEC. After that and having drunk many cocktails, we moved to the big party... and went to bed really late...





The real pain was waking up early next morning to go to work at ESTEC. In Noordwijk, where ESTEC is located, it wasn't a local holiday!

It was funny, coz on 3rd October at ESTEC, all the food was traditional Dutch food:

-Starter: Haring -- raw fish with some onion and sometimes accompanied with bread



- Main dish: Hutspot -- historical dish consisting of potatoes, carrots and onions puree, altogether. The legend says that they got this from a Spanish camp once the Spanish left the siege of Leiden. As they were hungry after the siege they ate it on the original 3rd October... For a more rigorous explanation go here.



- Dessert: Vla -- like Spanish "natillas" but a bit denser



Back to Leiden, I didn't take any pictures of the streets at all... but I still have some I took last year! It looks like the typical "fiestas del pueblo"... hehe...