We didn’t realized it when we planned our trip to Amsterdam, but it turned out we were there on King’s Day, the Netherlands’ national holiday. It is a huge event, sort of like the 4th of July on steroids. The population of Amsterdam doubles, with people coming from all over the small country for the day (you can go almost anywhere in the country by train in about an hour). Almost everybody dresses in orange, the national color, and for many people the holiday seemed like an excuse to drink all day. Our favorite pastime was standing next to a canal and watching the party boats come by, one after another. Each boat carried anywhere from about a dozen to maybe fifty people, most twentysomethings. It seemed like every boat had a loud boombox and an ample supply of Heineken. One young man apparently had too much Heineken and he was peeing off the side of his boat as it came by us. It was a fun and rowdy day.
After a while we strolled over to Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s huge urban park. It is a tradition on King’s Day for people to set up tables in front of their homes to sell their unwanted stuff. The only day of the year, apparently, where you don’t need to get a permit to do this. The children join in by bringing their unwanted toys to Vondelpark to sell to passersby, sort of a gigantic yard sale. We didn’t buy anything but we did give a couple of euros to a young lady who was playing her recorder. We didn’t stay too long because it was horrendously crowded. This was true in some other parts of Amsterdam, as well. It was so crowded in spots that it was difficult to move around – human gridlock!
We ended up at a south Indian restaurant for dinner, not far from our hotel. We chatted with the young man who served us and he said he had only been in Amsterdam since last fall. Going through the cold, damp Amsterdam winter was quite an adjustment for him.
Videos:
Young men in chicken suit video: img_6456
Boats were crowded, with techno music blasting. We also had our own view of a live Manneken Pis img_6483