Arrival of Sinterklaas – Den Haag and Leiden
On November 14th and November 21st, I attended the arrival of Sinterklaas to the Netherlands from Spain. For those of you who don’t know, Sinterklaas is like Santa Clause, but he comes on December the 5th rather than the 25th, and has two famous helpers: Black Pete and his white horse Americo.Yes, I said Black Pete – for more on that, you can look here and here.
A few weeks before December 5th, Sinterklaas officially arrives in the Netherlands from the sea, and apparently just chills out until the big day. Both of the arrivals were filled with little children dressed like Pete and Sinterklaas, singing and dancing to Sinterklaas songs and eating lots of traditional dutch seasonal candy. The Den Haag arrival was nice, except for the weather – it was windy and rainy. There were lots of company sponsored Pete’s around handing out candy and acting goofy. The Leiden arrival was smaller, but the weather was nicer and there was a chocomel van giving out free drinks, which makes this arrival my favourite.
You can see pictures here, below are highlights.
