Good Friday, Great Friday, Wonderful Friday.

Another very interesting thing about The Netherlands was to find that Good Friday was not an official public holiday. In fact everything was open and running in both Haarlem and Antwerp (where we are for the weekend).

The kidlet isn’t debating if the Easter bunny is real

Most unusual is that everything in Haarlem (and most of NL) is closed on a Sunday yet Good Friday, which I thought I considered one of the more religious days of the year, it was business as usual.

The company I work for being international recognised the Easter Weekend as a holiday and a number of other organisations do the same.

In Sydney there are no bars open and bottle shops are legislated to all be closed. In Antwerp everything was open and we sat down in the square for an afternoon drink and watched the people go by. 

Anneke and I stopping for a rest in the square – Antwerp

The square is right at the doorstep of one of the most beautiful cathedrals I have ever seen. We saw the locals walk through the square with the cross and we certainly did reflect on the day.

We can see the Cathedral from our hotel room

Outside one of the doors to the Cathedral

Some of the detail around the church

We also debated whether it was correct practice to not eat meat on good Friday. Just in case we made sure we had Mussels for dinner. Anneke tried them but had fish and of course ‘chippies’.