An outdoor book fair, a hidden courtyard, and a floating flower market – it’s Spui Square! Noelle and I both got hit with a pretty bad flu bug over the last couple days, but we managed to stay coherent enough to wander around this cool part of the city.
The weather has been absolutely beautiful for the last week or so, and today was no different. Spui square is a fairly short walk away from our apartment in the Jordaan neighborhood, and the route takes you over some of the best canal views in the city!
I’ve also spotted some sweet VW’s in the area. Seeing these makes me miss my rotting piece of metal back home just a little bit.
On Fridays, the square hosts an outdoor book market (I guess going to outdoor markets is a thing we do now?) We didn’t actually buy anything, but it was fun to sit back and watch the bustling activity. Amsterdam is definitely a city in motion; people riding bikes right and left, cars honking, trams streaking by. We love it, and it’s quite a big change from the automobile gridlock of suburbia Chicago! 
We soon found our way into the Begijnhof courtyard. This hidden quiet space is completely opposite and insulated from the busy Spui square right next door. This place is actually super old, dates from the 1300’s, and used to house a group of religious women known as beguines. Today it is a nice, bright courtyard with a couple cool churches and private houses.
We then wandered back out to Spui, walked down the street a bit, and found ourselves at the Bloemenmarkt. This floating flower market area was pretty cool. We wanted to visit this place in anticipation for our soon to be trip to the famed flower auction at Aalsmeer. Honestly, I was expecting there to be more actual flowers for sale, but most of it was the bulbs or seeds, along with the obligatory wooden shoe or kitchy windmill trinket. A little too much on the tourist trap side for me!
At this point, the flu symptoms were starting to kick back in, so we headed back to the apartment – hopefully we will be back at it soon with a couple decent trips planned for next week!
