Wanderlust and windmills: May 2013

Last month was the national holiday of the Netherlands- Queen's Day, or koninginnedag. This is a massive event to celebrate the royal family. There are parties, street markets, concerts and general craziness. Most importantly, everyone and everything turns orange for the day! Orangjegekte, or 'orange madness' is a huge part of Dutch national identity. It comes from the traditional colour of the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau.

The holiday was first observed in 1885 for the Princess Wilhelmenia's fifth birthday. It escalated when she became Queen, and has been passed on to the reigning monarch ever since.

The girls and I went to Amsterdam to stay with friends and experience the centre of the madness. We left ridiculously early the day before, because we had been warned about the horrendous crowds. We were already in our orange garb, so we got a few weird looks.

Shannon is pumped

This year was an extra big deal- Queen Beatrix was passing the throne
to her son, Willem-Alexander. This means next year it'll be King's day

We were staying with friends at the student residence, which was super fun! The night before Queen's day, incidentally called Queen's night, there are big street parties and concerts in the squares. After hearing rumours of public transport being either free or not working, we did manage to stow away on a tram to get into the city to join all the revellers.

Chilling out on the residence roof on Queen's night

On the tram- so sneaky! We also demonstrated our public
transport expertise by thinking we were going the wrong way,
hopping off, reconsidering (with some local help) and then
getting back on the same line. Ahhhah

Of course we ran into people from Tilburg amongst the
thousands who were there!

On the main day, we were up and about to enjoy the sun. Nicole, Carrie and I went into the city (more stowing away, rebels!). We walked around Amsterdam's pretty streets, checked out the park and joined in the street parties. We walked past the coronation as some people were watching it on their TV in the street, and got to see the Royalty on the big screen in the square. I was struck by how positive the whole event was. It was just one great big epic happy party, and everyone was invited.

The new King and his family. So much hubbub!

Beautiful Amsterdam on Queen's Day. Lots of people have
boat parties on the canals.

Me and our lovely host Carrie :)
We wandered the streets for a while. The atmosphere was
really festive. People of all ages joined in, and
the commitment to orange was impressive!

Queen's day is also a massive nationwide flea market.
Taxes for selling on the street are waived, and so
everyone gets out to sell their stuff.
Turnover is estimated at about 290 million euros.

In the park there were also people making
money in more creative ways.
Lots of kids were busking, or had
adorable home-made carnival games.
Here was the funniest- a guy was
charging people to throw an egg at him.

Street party! This was a blast. There were tons of random parties
scattered around. Not all were like this one, some were just
people with their speakers outside having a few beers :)

Confetti!!

After dancing till pretty late, we finally dragged ourselves away for the long train ride back, now able to say that we experienced Queen's Day in Amsterdam!

The Netherlands is the world's largest exporter of flowers, and yes, especially tulips! So a few weekends ago we went to experience it at Keukenhof, a massive park of flowers in the North-East of the Netherlands. It's the world's largest flower garden: 32 hectares of pretty, filled with 7 MILLION FLOWERS.
In the 15th Century it was a hunting ground, but in 1949 a flower exhibition was held to promote Dutch flower exports. Somewhere along the way someone got carried away. 7 million flowers kind of carried away.

So we basically spent the day taking pictures, frolicking and cooing over how pretty it all was. It was all very cheerful and uplifting :)
I thought about adding some fun facts about tulips- like apparently tulips were behind the first economic bubble, called 'tulip mania'. But what tulips are really about is being pretty! Click here if you really want words instead of flowers.
Otherwise....