Queen's Day 2007

Our friends Joan & Jim flew in from Chicago for a week's holiday, starting with a few nights in Amsterdam to celebrate the Queen's Day holiday. Prior to the actual holiday, we spent a couple of days roaming the streets of Amsterdam. If you've ever been here or you know anything about the city you know that there's more than enough to keep you busy ('nuf said). The city was busy as usual, but you could call it downright tranquil compared to what was about to happen on Monday. This post contains many pics, so click on photos to enlarge -- pictured: pre-party lounging along a canal; decorated boat; lonely (but not for long) beer tap.

Between our boat tour and just walking around, we saw quite a few interesting sights. You can really see the city getting ready for the party ... balloons and decorations of all types all over the place. Some red/white/blue but mostly orange. We looked on in amazement as a group of guys were tying ribbons across the street between the pubs and stores ... in order to steady the ladder on the uneven street, they used the advanced method of cardboard beer coasters! They were very confident (or it might have been the beer that they were drinking as they performed this dangerous task).

Although we've never been, we think the closest thing in the US would be Mardi Gras. The party starts early -- when we walked out on Monday morning, the streets were already crowded and people were literally streaming in from the train station. The streets get so packed, especially near the canals and the main squares, that you can barely move.

The party really starts with the street sales. People all over the city put out their junkiest wares hoping that someone is already drunk enough to buy them (they are). Also, it's a chance for people to make money in strange ways; kids playing instruments (some better than others), pie-in-the-face, and so forth. We even saw people peddling hugs and the right to pet their dogs.

There's entertainment all around the city, but our favorite activity of the day was watching the canal boat parade. The boats quickly turned from a trickle to a steady stream. There's everything from two-person motorboats to floating "decks" of people. Each one has its own sound system -- the bigger ones actually have DJs and some had brass bands! The really good ones get the crowd going -- someone on one rocking boat threw a bottle of wine to Rochelle (it's like they knew us)! One of the boats was even broadcasting for MTV. Sometimes the crowd watching the parade was as entertaining as the boat parade itself.

Sadly, the sun and excitement (not to mention liquid refreshments) led to an early end to the day for Rich & Rochelle. Even though we got an early start I'd be embarrassed to say what time we were back in our hotel room. Joan & Jim managed to stay out quite a bit later. We're amazed at how orderly the holiday is ... despite all of the partying, it begins and ends early, and people seem relatively well-behaved. Next year, if we don't have any visitors, we'll have to see how it's done outside of Amsterdam.

We're posting more Queen's Day pics daily for about a week on our daily photo blog; check it out at www.wassenaardailyphoto.blogspot.com. And look for our next post on the 2nd half of our trip with Joan & Jim (the party continues in Dublin) in two weeks. Thanks also to Jim for contributing some great shots to the pics.