The money was spent. All gone. The lust for shopping wasn’t. My friends Sabine and Anke said: “Let’s go to the Amsterdam IJhallen!” This is an enormous flea market (hallen = market and IJ = the name of a big water in Amsterdam). At the IJhallen, the prices are right for people with little money in their pocket, like us. Anke could only join us at the end of the day, so Sabine and I went to the flea market together. Although without Anke we had a lot of fun as you can see from the first picture. Laughing doesn’t cost anything, yet it is so precious.
I will take you through our day photo by photo.
Below: it is a very industrial site, pretty run-down… The warehouses of Netherland Shipbuilding Company. 
Below: It was a cold and foggy day, so we decided to first go to a small restaurant (Noorderlicht) near the flea market. The coffee was excellent and they had heating. Watch Sabine arriving, fighting against the wind.
Below: the restaurant looks pretty aweful from the outside, but is quite friendly inside. This is what I was wearing that day: black top, black jacket, gold necklace with pendant, skinny jeans and knee-high black suede boots (no heels….. I am a sensible woman).
Below: and this is what Sabine was wearing. A new leather jacket with removable sleeves and beautiful lining, new green boots. She looked smashing but was freezing. The weather forecast was wrong: no sunshine and warm temperatures.
Below: in summer this is a perfect spot overlooking the water (the IJ). Weird but beautiful.
Below: we have arrived at the flea market. This is about 1/4 of the whole market.
Below: I need a new trolley for work but decided against it. I want a really good one and I couldn’t tell whether this one was good or bad. The colour, although happy, is a bit ostentatious (I love that word 😉 ).
Below: old fashioned ice skates. It is horror keeping those wooden things strapped to your boots. Fortunately I got figure skates after one winter on wooden ones.
Below: just what I needed … a kangaroo… (kidding).
Below: we spotted these little animals. Couldn’t resist taking “Mouse” home with me. The grey one with the blue short suit. Isn’t he adorable? He was the mascot of the day.
Below: Sabine bought this green beanie, which of course suited her very well. She can wear any hat of any sort.
Below: she thought she could sell me this brown one… NEVER. I look like a dork (and this is the best picture).
Below: these girls asked whether we could take a picture of the three of them together. Of course. Sabine did the photographing. And the girls offered to return the favour.
Below: I am going to show you several photos of the one scene. Just because I want to show you what it is like when you have a laughter attack. Can you remember the last time you had one? I sure hope you can.
Below: when we were normal again (as normal as we can be…) we continued. And saw this woman with a definite style of her own. Her head was shaven on one side apart from a little red bit, and on the other side of her head she had long red hair. Very confident woman.
Below: as Sabine has “the eye”, she spotted this lovely little blouse for € 2,- in which she will undoubtedly look fabulous. Brand Ichi (Scandinavian).
Below: a photo shoot. These premises are a perfect spot for photo shoots. Although not very easy with all these people walking past.
Below: just around the corner a TV shoot. No idea what the programme is, but the lady in the blue coat is a famous singer, performer and show host in The Netherlands: Angela Groothuizen. (My apologies to Angela, the photo I took is not very flattering. Here you can see better ones.)
Below: we quickly went back to the restaurant to have lunch and after that met Anke in Amsterdam Haarlemmerstraat (see the post about this area). Drank lots of coffee and hot chocolate with whipped cream as we were cold. Mouse was with us as we planned a trip to Paris. Mouse would like to come with us to Paris. (Bad iPhone photo.)
Anke managed to buy a beautiful black bag just before closing time. (Sorry, it is wrapped and in the plastic bag.) 
Again, it has been a wonderful day. Did you like it? Could the post have done with less photos? Did you have difficulties loading this post?
One little note on the photo size: I took these pictures with my new camera. And the size of the photos was set to 16:9 instead of 3:2. Which results into a different format. Got it solved for the future, but obviously I cannot change it anymore for this post. Lightroom can do a lot but cannot work miracles.
Greetje
PS Linking up with Visible Monday
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