This was the first year that we were able to properly celebrate a King’s day in Amsterdam! Last year was still wild with most of the parties still happening, but none of the official events. After seeing how busy the streets were last year I was a little nervous to see how crazy it would be for a ‘real’ King’s Day. Spoiler alert, I was very pleasantly surprised!
A little background on King’s Day if you don’t remember my post from last year, is that King’s Day is celebrated ever April 27 and it is customary to wear orange to celebrate. We don’t have anything quite similar in the US, but the closest I can think of is the 4th of July.
For the adults, King’s Day really starts the day before on what they call King’s night. It is a little like how in the US people celebrate and go out partying the day before Thanksgiving. The most popular place to be in the Jordaan which is a neighborhood in the center of Amsterdam. They have stages ALL of the city with tons of live music. Jordaan was totally packed with people celebrating!
The next day for actual King’s Day we started the day by wandering around the city and seeing the various markets. It is the one day a year where people can sell anything they want on the street. Kids flock to parks to sell their old toys and buy new ones and it is like the city is one giant garage sale. We didn’t buy anything, but it was fun to look. Actually, I take that back….. there are tons of food and beer stands around the city so we did buy beer throughout the day!
One minor set back was that my bike ended up with a flat tire. All public transit in the city is closed due to the festivities so not having my bike really limited my transportation options. The good thing is that it is quite normal to ride of the back of friends bikes! We also took one national train a single station which helped to.
We spent the day with my coworkers wandering the city with a beer in hand taking in all of the festivities. It was a ton of fun and I can’t wait for next year, although maybe I’ll try to have a little less fun so the next day isn’t so rough 😉
❤ Melanie
Smiles from Miles Away 