The 30th of April is Queen's Day in the Netherlands. It's a national holiday in the vein of our 4th of July, only bigger, as the Dutch are less likely to display national pride than we are, unless it's a World Cup year. For Queen's Day the city hangs flags and everyone dresses in orange in honor of the royal family, which is descended from the House of Orange. Amsterdam hosts a music festival and opens the large city park to children, who put on little concerts and other shows. Everyone with a boat parades through the Prinsengracht, one of the main canals that rings the city. Basically, everybody gets a bunch of booze and hits the boats.
Rob's parents are in town and a couple of our friends parked their boats on the canal so we could watch the parade float by.
We had brunch in the morning at a friend's house, fought our way through the throng of people to the boats and then took it all in. We had a great time, but probably not as good as this guy:
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