Live. Laugh. Love.: Queen's Day

Definition from Wikipedia:
"Koninginnedag or Queen's Day is a national holiday in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Celebrated on 30 April (the 29th if the 30th is a Sunday), Koninginnedag is Queen Beatrix's official birthday—she was born on 31 January; 30 April was the birthday of her mother and predecessor, Juliana. The holiday remains as an April observance in honour of Juliana and in the anticipation of better weather than would be encountered in January."

There is also the vrijmarkt which means free market. It is really just a giant flea market/tag sale type thing. I spent the weekend in Amsterdam and in Vondelpark is where all the children are for the vrijmarkt. As we walked through there were kids singing, dancing, playing guitar, selling jewelry, popcorn, juice, painting nails, offering massages, etc. Literally anything you could think of to sell, was being sold. The kids were all so cute and the park was PACKED. Everyone was dressed in orange, teenagers and older were drinking already at 9 am and some guys we saw were already very drunk. We walked through the park for a bit and each of us ended up buying something. My friend Kira bought some gimp key chain, I bought an orange winter hat for 2 euros, Jane bought some dog tail coat hangars for her wall (just so we could take a picture in a cut out face of the Queen) and then we bought juices, popcorn. My favorite purchase of the day was 3 little water pistols filled with beer for 2 euros each! Those provided endless entertainment.

Overview of museumplein!

After we passed through the park we made our way out to the streets. All of the streets in Amsterdam were closed. No busses, trams or cars could make their way through as the streets were just full of people all decked out in orange. Everywhere you went there were djs, bands and music in the street. All of the squares also had big festivals going on. Museumplein was the biggest and we went there for a bit. It was WAY too crowded for our liking so we ended up leaving after a bit and went to Rembrandtplein. Even there it was super crowded, we couldn't figure out where the entrance was so we sat outside the closed off festival and listened from the outside while we sat for a bit.

We spent most of the day wandering the streets and making friends wherever we went. Everyone is loud, drunk and dancing in the streets. It was a lot of fun!! Eventually we decided food was necessary and of course with 8 of us at a restaurant we were the loudest ones. The rest of the night we spent going from pub to pub and somehow 4 of us managed to last from 9 am (having only slept for 5 hours the night before) until 6 am again. It was a really great weekend.