Such a massive day yesterday! The last Queens Day for some time to come, as the old Queen (Beatrix) abdicated to make room for her son, the New King Willem-Alexander!
I didn’t want to miss a minute of it, and I also wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on seeing things I missed last year.
So we got up and donned our orange, and headed out on foot through the masses of crowds and street stalls.
We made our way through Vondel Park which is reserved each year for the childrens markets, then from there over to Museum Plein.
Then up around the Grachten Gordel into the Negen Straatjes where we paused for coffee and food before making our way to the Dam.
We wound our way back through the crowds and were by that time in search of a pub in which to have a seat and watch the passers by.
We found a wonderful little bar where we could not only see all the dignitaries arriving in their cars, but they had a big screen projection of the proceedings going on.
(A translation of the King’s speech for those who are interested.)
From there we made our way down to the Spui.
We made it through Leidseplein,
… and down the Overtoom before giving up on the streets and deciding to fight our way through the crowds in Vondle Park again. At least the wheeled traffic was at a minimum in there!
It was a massive day out, and we both came home exhausted.
Perhaps next year we can … something different?
LONG LIVE THE KING!
ghoti industries 
You saw a lot! We were and are so exhausted, still even today!! But so worth it. Hope you had fun.
We saw HEAPS! 🙂 And yes, I’m still pretty wiped out today! Just from walking through all the crowds! I’m so glad we found a good seat to watch the inauguration though! And thanks to my lessons, I even understood some of it!
I’m a bit jealous of you seeing the fish races though! I missed those completely! Having said that though, there was so much going on in Vondle Park that both times I went through I think I was in information overload! I was also wary of taking pictures in there because of all the children around.
So much fun though!
All those people! No wonder you’re exhausted. The noise and the sights and the people and the excitement, oh my! Glad you found a seat from which to comfortably watch the goings-on. Sounds like you already have ideas of what to see next year (fish races? as in.. we race fish?), too!
Next year I don’t think we’ll push ourselves to see as much. We may just make it to Vondel Park and have an all day picnic. Or, we may just avoid the whole thing and stay home.Or … we may try and find some people to spend the day with.
It’s changing date next year as it’ll be King’s Day, not Queen’s Day. So who knows what he will have planned to do then. Though it’s planned to be in Amstelveen, so we may head there and try to catch a glimpse of the Royals 🙂
Is the change in date related to the monarch’s birthday? or a date of his choice? Or does it change date regularly?
The date was Princess Beatrix’s Mother’s Birthday. (got that?) When Beatrix became Queen she left the date as her mother’s birthday as the weather was more conducive to outside activies which are traditional for Queens Day (like the markets), and Beatrix’s birthday is the 30th January, not conducive to outdoor activities.
Willem-Alexander’s birthday is the 27th April. So neatly slots into the time of year everyone is used to, while being able to actually hold it on his birthday.