Queen's Day, Koninginnedag - April 30

On Queen's Night (April 29) Ewa and Giulia came back for Queen's Day, so it was a girls of Pad22 reunion!

The night before Queen's Day is Queen's Night, which is when the partying starts. People go to clubs that have special events in honor of the Queen (read: get drunk). The tradition started in the early 90s when pre-Koninginnedag riots were a problem in the Hague. How did the government deal with the rioters? Convince them that a party is a much better way to spend Queen's Night! It also became a national holiday.


Queen's Day is a celebration of the Queen's birthday. It started with Queen Wilhelmina, grandmother of the current Queen, on August 31. After 1948 Koninginnedag moved to April 30, Queen Juliana's Birthday. When her daughter, current Queen Beatrix, took the thrown she decided to keep the holiday on April 30th, because her birthday is on January 31, and it's too cold and rainy to party outside then.

The day is also known as the vrijmarkt (free market), the one day in the year when anyone can sell anything on the street. We saw everything from traditonal lemonade stands, to getting your picture taken with someones dog, to using people's toilets for a small fee.



Orange is the color for Queen's day, because the Royal family is the House of Orange. Even the Red Light District celebrated. The girls on the steps in the orange underwear are prostitutes.


Many people spend the day on a boat, it's really the place to be. This is the Amstel river, from which we boarded our boat. Behind me is the Muntplein (Mint Square).
We were lucky to be on a boat organized by the unviersity that day...


We partied and danced to crappy music, and even got stuck in a traffic jam under one of the bridges. Most people were getting drunk.
People were partying all over the streets and houseboats.


We bought our matching milkmaid hats in Keukenhof, and they were very popular during the day. We counted 7 people taking pictures of us. Towards the end of the day, a slightly larger group of people was taking what we thought was our picture. We thought we were a popular attraction, so we waved, posed and laughed. We didn't notice that beside us a guy was spewing off the side of our boat. I wish I could see the picture those people got. But because of these hats, everyone assumed we were Dutch. And because we were so cute, we were able to avoid the rush for paid toilets in crappy restaurants, and were let in to the fancy Krasnapolsky Hotel.


The boat made a few stops, so we got to spend some time on the crowded streets.


This was our Queen's Day schtick.

When we hit the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) there were more boats...


... and more...


... so we decided to go boat hopping. Earlier in the day we convinced a guy from a boat full of old people to jump on our boat. About half an hour later, he appeared on our boat again, and we hopped along to his. To get to his boat (the guy in the orange) I had to go over this one. The guy thought it would be really funny to grab me as I jumped across and pull me down on top of him. Haha, his floor broke under our weight. I took a quick rest on his couch, and hopped on.


Happy Queen's Day!