A Look Back at Queen’s Day in Amsterdam
Yesterday was Queen’s Day in the Netherlands and Amsterdam was totally nuts. My wife and I started the day close to our apartment, in an area called Oost Watergraassmeer, just a little south-east of central Amsterdam. What we saw there was a more traditional part of the Queen’s Day festivities-the area became a giant yard sale to go along with a festival type atmosphere with rides for kids and lots of food. I actually enjoyed this part of Queen’s Day more than I thought I would as I’m not normally big on the family friendly stuff.
We then spent the rest of the day walking and drinking around central Amsterdam. The city was completely overrun by people and subsequently garbage. And for some reason, drunk people seem to think it’s cool to throw their empty beer cans into the canals.
This was the biggest party I’ve ever seen, I’ve been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans but this was even bigger. Part of it was because not only were the streets packed, but the canals were packed with boats, many of which were packed with people. There were so many boats in the busiest canals that if you had to use the bathroom you could just jump boats to get out of the canal (or use the canal of course). Mardi Gras in New Orleans is also more controlled, while there were Dutch police around, I personally didn’t see anyone get arrested, despite the drunken anarchy throughout the city.
When the sun went down we decided to start making our way home so as not to deal with the crowded public transportation. And we made the otherwise hour long walk home an event since we turned it into a pub crawl. The first bar we stopped in was very local and people were unwinding from a long Queen’s Day. We talked to a few Dutch people that said they don’t like Queen’s Day because they don’t like having an ambiguous Queen, even though this massive national holiday isn’t about the Queen anymore.
Queen’s Day is a fantastic event that I highly recommend, but if you ever want to come for one in Amsterdam make sure to book a hotel or hostel 6 months in advance. This place gets packed!
I’ll be showing more Queen’s Day pictures later this week in my Jackass Amsterdam Pictures of the Week.
Photo Credit: Personal Collection
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