Amsterdam, Netherlands

On April 30th of every year (April 29 if on a Sunday) there is a big celebration for the Queen's Birthday in The Netherlands. The Dutch call it, 'Koninginnedag', but I can’t pronounce it half of the time. Queen's Day is known for its "freemarket (vrijmarkt)," where everybody is allowed to sell things in the streets. It's basically one big country-wide, drunken garage sale. They have the market and party all night the night before the Queen's birthday in the streets of many major Dutch cities. All of this time in this country, and I had not been to Amsterdam, so my friend Siobhan and I decided to go.

Amsterdam is like everyone says it is. Anything (or almost anything) goes. Ten year old boys will try and sell you alcohol, prostitution being rampant, and marijuana is readily and publically available. Come to think of it, sex is pretty much everywhere in this city. Sex museums, normal-looking women that come up to you asking for sex (I think they are more discreet prostitutes), blow-up sex dolls all over the city, banana shows, cigarette shows, I can go on. The interesting part is that this all even happens in the day time, making Queen’s Day quite the experience for some and a disaster for others. Alas, there were a lot of people....




...and a few arrests. One of which I caught on camera:

Apart from the madness, Amsterdam has a nice atmosphere and has many canalways and sites to see. However, we couldn’t go into any of the museums or major attractions since everything was closed due to the holiday. This will call for a trip back. Side-note: There was an attempted suicide attack on the Dutch Queen that day during festivities in Appeldorn which halted celebrations in most Dutch cities...Amsterdam, however, kept going strong.

I started getting a cold that day as well (I hoped it wasn't the swine flu scare) so the day ended early in preparation for the next day.

More from Amsterdam/ Queen's Day