King's Day is the biggest street party and day of orange wearing in the Netherlands! The national holiday celebrates the birthday of King Willem-Alexander. King's Day has been celebrated since 1885 and when there is a monarch in power, it is known as Queen's Day.
To celebrate King's Day, Teresa and Mike were going on a boat to party in the canals while I went and found Carissa and her friends to wander the streets with. Initially, I just spent time watching the boats that were so packed they looked like they would sink. Each boat was blasting their own music which was competing with the music blasting on the street making it one giant street party!
On King's Day it is tradition to have yard sales on the street. The night before, people mark on a section where they plan to sell their old clothes, antiques, and other goods. In Vondel park in the morning the park is reserved for children to sell their old toys and clothes. The children who were selling things were so cute! Many even had interactive games where you paid a euro to try to hit a potato out of a tube. My favorite game located in the city center was a pull up station where they gave you 100 euros if you could hang from the bar for more than 2 minutes. It must have been hard or the business owners would be out of business.
There was a long line for a fancy stroopwafel shop and although I have had tons of stroopwafels so far, I really wanted to try a fresh one. The fresh one was delightful with the warm caramel inside and crunchy exterior. The brownie crumbles I got on top was definitely a sugar overload but #wheninAmsterdam. I had also really wanted to try Dutch pancakes so Carissa and I stopped when we saw a man selling mini Dutch waffles with Nutella.
The streets were absolutely insane in the city center and surrounding canals. At times it was so packed everyone was like sardines in a can pushing one another to get out. There were several times we were trapped in massive crowds with no way out. I was clinging to Carissa's hand to not lose her in the dense crowds. I know the Dutch are the tallest people in the world but being squished in the crowd made me realize just how short I was in comparison. The biggest crowds were generally located in front of where bands were performing and also on the bridges.
We walked around all day getting our 30,000 steps in and talking in the madness that was King's Day. Eventually when we were too tired we settled on the grass at Vondel Park.
I was having dinner at Mike and Teresa's with their friends. They had invited over 20 of their friends. I found it fascinating how all of their friends were from either Denver or Austin and somehow were all in Amsterdam at the same time. Small world I guess. I really enjoyed meeting their friends and ended up even networking a little bit. There was one guy who had worked at Accenture for about 13 years and was giving me tips about how to be successful and also telling me about his experience. He was an expat in Australia for 5 years and did extensive work in India which is definitely one of my goals. I probably talked to him for way too long but I really wanted to hear all about the company given that I will start sometime this summer. Another connection I made was with a business professor at UT Austin who taught Accounting and was telling me all about MBA's. When I asked for his LinkedIn he commended me on being a very good business student.
Dinner was delicious but the dessert was where it was really at. We had more stroopwafels, traditional Dutch apple pie, and since it was King's Day we had an orange King's cake.
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