Amsterdam, Queen's Day

Our visit to Amsterdam brought many unexpected experiences. It is a city filled with all kinds of people, especially on this day -- when they celebrate the queen's birthday. It's hard to feel like we're not exaggerating, but it seems that there must have been over a million people roaming the streets and partying on boats in the canals on this festive day. In fact, a little research turned up that the attendance ranges from 500,000 to 2 million on Queen's Day. I'm sure that Claire would have liked the day, everyone was decked out in the brightest of orange (the color of the Dutch monarchy)!

As many people know, prostitution, marijuana, and mushrooms are all legal here - which means there are an abundance of sex and drug paraphernalia shops among the streets... not to mention the prostitutes who 'advertise' their services by dancing in the windows of their 'place of business.' We spent most of the day just walking around taking in the excitement of the day. As with Queen's Night in The Hague the night before, there were bands playing everywhere, crafts and food for sale, and no shortage of beer. In the midst of it all we also ran into a stage with a Christian praise band, singing 'Yes Lord, yes Lord, yes yes Lord' -- quite the juxtaposition with the rest of the events of the day.


Our other main activity for the day was visiting the hiding place of Anne Frank. The house is now a museum chronicling the story of the family and their experiences hiding from the Nazi occupiers. The exhibits were nicely done, we learned a lot, and appreciated being able to connect the book we read as kids to a real life place and greater context. By the time we finished in the museum we were pretty well pooped out, and headed for the train station. We'll leave you with a couple more pictures of the festivities!