Kingsday 2018
By Natalia Giner Laguarda
Koningsdag or Kingsday is a national holiday celebrated in The Netherlands. This holiday is celebrated the 27th of April. This celebration represents the birth of the Willem-Alexander
This holiday its known for its freemarket (vrijmarkt in dutch) where the Dutch sell their second hand items. However, Kingsday is more known for its light orange color. Orange-coloured drinks and clothes become the rule of the day. This fact is sometimes called as “orange madness”, or “oranjegekte” in dutch.
Currently, kingsday hosts many celebrations as concerts or special events in public areas. This day, the city centre is closed to cars and no trams arrive to the centre of the city.
King’s Night & Day parties
Eventhough kingsday is a public holiday it is for sure not a day of rest. Generally, the celebration begins already on the evening of the big day. This night is known as the Koninginnenacht (Queen’s Night) or in english kingsnight. Many young people celebrate also kings night in the streets of Amsterdam throughout the night.
The carnival atmosphere continues throughout the night until kingsday. DJs play music on decorated boats, public squares and fill the canals and streets with live music.
Kingsday in Amsterdam
Although kingsday celebrations take place in the whole entire Netherlands, Amsterdam is the most popular location. Often the city receives up to 1 million visitors.
This year we moved from Wageningen to Amsterdam to celebrate kingsday. Some friends of mine came from Valencia to experience this dutch festivity and hence both of them dressed in orange.
We arrived soon to Amsterdam and everything was already decorated just with the presence of the people in the streets.
We walked through the streets where music was played by restaurants, children and street musicians.
This year was my third year in Amsterdam but for those who were experiencing Amsterdam in orange, it was amazing to see all the orange boats floating in the channel. All the bars get crowded and the later it becomes, the less space is available to walk through the street.
If you want to be part of this festivity, you should be able to arrange some orange stuff beforehand. Both Action and Hema offer a wide variety of random items and paints to help you with this issue.
If you have still not been in Amsterdam on the 27th of April, you can already plan ahead for next year and if you are doubting where to go, you might certainly choose for Amsterdam.