Queen's day 2001

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Amsterdam, being a normally tranquil, clean and vaguely enigmatic city who's "emblem" is XXX, is best navigated by water - even if on foot,
undergoes a radical transformation on the last day of April.
Koninginnedag (Koning == King, Koninginne == Queen (?), dag == day) was inaugurated to celebrate the Queen's (now queen-mother's) birthday and the entire Dutch nation either hits the streets, has some kind of jumble sale or takes to the water. Or a bit of all of these.

Sound systems go up early and people just start dancing in odd corners but mainly on boats, from what I saw.
As the day limbers up (as well as the sound volume, in places) the general numbers swell both on and off the water. Turning the quiet bywaters ( 1 | 2 ) into somthing a little more anarchic.

Sooner or later, anything that floats goes past and by anything, I mean anything. Meanwhile the local wildlife gets out of the way.

Being Amsterdam, I presume most of this group were tourists and they were definately entering into the general fun of the day; but everyone was happy, especially if they'd just made a sale.

One thing that really showed up all day was that the normally clean(ish) streets suffered but the cleaners did get out early.

The party gradually winds down, returning Holland to normal and sending this correspondant home.

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