Orange Day Celebration

My teammates had gone to Paris on Saturday and came back today. I stayed back in Utrecht to witness 'Koninginnedag' (Queen's Day) instead, which happens on 30th April every year.

The celebration starts on the eve which is also known as 'Koninginnenacht' (Queen's Night). People would be donning orange coloured clothes, shoes, accessories or even dye their hair orange. Some of them wearing funny orange coloured hats. I saw one wore a complete orange coloured suit (the blazer and pants!). Some organizations would also distribute free blow-up orange coloured crowns to be worn. From a bird's eye view, you're practically looking at a sea of orange! Of course, there's the tri-colour Dutch flags everywhere too but most of them comes with a long narrow orange streamer that is flown above the flag.

Orange, orange and orange!

Vrijmarkt (Free markets) are also set up everywhere starting at 6pm on Queen's Night right until 6pm the next day. That's the only 24 hours (or 1 day) where anybody can sell anything on the streets without any licence. You can see almost all kinds of stuffs being sold, mostly secondhand items that they'd want to throw out from their houses - from old typerwriters to furnitures to kitchen items to clothes and toys. There's also lots of people selling food and drinks (mostly orange juice). Also a very good excuse for lots of people to party, go crazy and get drunk.

And oh, there's lots and lots of performances everywhere. Stages being set up, bands marching here and there, there are also kids doing solo performances like playing the drums, violin, recorder, and so many more. Remember American Idol? Well, they have one here in Utrecht too.

Holland Idiots. *lol*

The entire city is practically noisy, crowded and did I mention, orange? It's not even this happening when we celebrate Agong's birthday! Although I'm not much of a fan for crowded places, it was still a great experience, to have the opportunity to be here in Holland and witness Queen's Day. :)

Now that reminds me, I still have some oranges left in the fridge which I must finish tonight. *wink*