koninginnedag

that's queen's day in dutch. april 30th, the people in the netherlands celebrate the birthday of Queen Juliana. it is a public holiday and nearly all shops are closed. the current queen chooses one or two towns each year to visit. the queen is greeted with parades, flags, music, and of course people wearing the official color of the country - orange!

although the queen did not choose our town to visit this year, we still rode our bikes into hilversum to see what was going on in the city..... of course most of us found some orange to wear that day. we found a city-wide garage sale in the center of town, a carnival with rides, food, and lots of people "celebrating" the day.

the last 2 pictures were taken at the entrance of our home. the gardeners put out 2 special flags for the day. the netherlands flag and an orange flag (unfortunately you can't see the orange flag in the picture)