Amsterdam Day 274: King's Day

Today we celebrated Koningsdag or King's Day, a giant party in honor of the King's birthday. To start off the celebration, the city sets aside huge areas for Free Markets. They are basically the largest neighborhood garage sales that you have ever seen in your life. It is the one time of the year where taxes are suspended on the sales of goods for non commercial entities. But it is so much more. 

For as far as the eyes could see, there were booths set up selling clothes, toys, books, and other crap. But there were also people selling handcrafted items, baked goods, french fries, cotton candy, etc..  In addition to selling stuff, children were showing off their musical skills on the violin, trumpet, and drums. If there was not music from the children, there was music from speakers. There were also carnival type games set up everywhere, but done in an organic way by the people instead of a company. The whole things is so industrious and entrepreneurial like. 

For a feel of the atmposphere, think of the energy and excitement of the crowd before a 4th of July parade, and put everyone in orange instead of red, white, and blue. Although people did also have red white and blue since those are the colors of the Dutch flag. People were wearing so much orange and the most rediculous hats. The tackier the better. And at 10am the beer booth was going strong. It was amazing to see how many people were already drinking, or still drinking from the night before. 

After going around and finding so many wonderful "treasures," Ryan stated that this was the best King's Day ever. And this was even with occasional light rain, 41 degree temperature, and cancelled fireworks because of strong winds.

Later in the afternoon, I took the kids up to Vondelpark, the large central park in Amsterdam. By the time we arrived, most of the sellers had gone home, but there were two that were particularly interesting for the kids. 

First, this lady set up a bubble booth. For two Euro you got 10 minutes of blowing large bubbles. The better part was that for free, you could run around and pop the bubbles. After about 45 minutes of bubbles, we moved on to the next booth, but not before we were soaked and covered with soap scum.  

Ryan found a guy that was packing up all the rest of his "treasures" and he told Ryan he could take anything she wanted for free. And so she took many things. And most importantly, she did not forget about her little brother. She made sure to take a Mickey Mouse coloring book because Charlie loves Mickey Mouse. Again Ryan exclaimed that this was the best King's Day ever. And I had to agree, Best King's Day ever.