The Netherlands has a new King

Ok I have to be honest.  I had no clue that Holland even had a royal family, much less that it was going to be Queen’s Day while we were in Amsterdam, much less that the Queen had decided to renounce her crown (retire) to her son on Queen’s Day. 

This is the Royal Palace, the balcony behind me a ways is where the king and queen came out to greet the crowd of people waiting to celebrate with him.  

So needless to say we were surprised when we found out.  At first we noticed all of the orange decorations, the royal families last name means orange in Dutch, we just thought it was cool how patriotic people were.  HAHA well we were in for a treat.  We didn’t actually go to the city center where the huge crowd was but there were people everywhere. 

Our first day was great we got to do a walking tour and see all of the tulips and the second day was fantastic as well.  We went to the Anne Frank house and Heineken Brewery.  But our third day was a big puzzle.  It was the day we were leaving Amsterdam for Hemer, Germany (also Queen’s Day) but when several thousand people come to town they shut down many of the tramlines.  In the morning we went for a walk, bought some orange crowns to fit in, and continued to admire people bike riding skills.  We watched the king sign the documents on TV at the hostel and then in the early afternoon we headed for the bus station and were on our way!