Koninginnedag!!

Last Thursday was Koninginnedag (Queen's Day)! It's the actual birthday of koningin Juliana, the mother of the current queen, Beatrix, but koningin Beatrix celebrates her birthday on April 30 as well, even though her birthday is on January 31.

So basically, the whole country dresses up in orange and brings all their old junk out to the streets for a giant yard sale! There are bands and dj's playing all over and it's one big block party.

I was really looking forward to Koninginnedag, but I came down with a cold just before, so Rene and I decided to stay in Leiden instead of going to Amsterdam. We got all dressed up in orange, me in an orange top and an orange boa that Rene had bought me, and Rene in a pair of BRIGHT orange overalls. I bought orange spray-in hair color from the grocery store and we sprayed our hair orange- not a big change for Rene, but it took an awful lot to get my hair looking orange. Unfortunately, a lot of people in Leiden were party poopers, because there wasn't the huge amount of people decked out in orange as I thought there would be. In fact, we didn't see ANYONE wearing orange until we got over to where the yard sales were. I was feeling a little bit silly and disappointed, and actually took off the orange boa and put it in my purse. We found out from friends that Amsterdam was much more exciting, and we would have fit right in there. Maybe next year we'll head up that way . . .

We walked around all the blankets full of stuff for sale, but most of it was children's clothing and toys so we didn't find anything of value. Rene did buy an orange bow tie for 10 cents from a small boy who chased him down in the crowd to ask if he'd buy it. It had stains all over it, but Rene thought it was worth 10 cents because the boy worked so hard to get rid of it! We took a picture of it on Rene and then threw it away!

There were also lots of children playing instruments around town. We gave a euro to a little boy playing the cello- he had a sign that said that he was saving all the money to buy a bigger cello (his cello was probably able half the size of a normal cello). He was awfully cute!

We had been looking forward to going to hear Armin van Buuren dj near our house, but unfortunately because of the tragedy that happened in Apeldoorn, almost all the festivities around the country were canceled.

So Koninginnedag wasn't all that I had expected, but it was still fun, and maybe if we go to a bigger city next year it will be more, um, orange!