::Friday Link-Up:: How to Prepare for Queen’s Day in Amsterdam

Today I’m linking up with Ellen over at Company of Clever. April 30th, the craziest party day of the year is upon us Amsterdammers—QUEEN’S DAY!! Every year, Dutchies dress head-to-toe in orange in celebration of the Queen’s birthday (but not this Queen…a Queen from long ago!). Since this is my 4th year celebrating Queen’s Day (except the 2nd year where we escaped to Mexico for some R&R with family and friends), I prepared a How to Survive Queen’s Day List. Amsterdam goes absolutely crazy every April 30th…let the preparations begin!

How to survive Queen's Day:

1. Prepare for crowds, lots and lots and lots of crowds! Amsterdam is a small city and does not cater towards mass amounts of people…there’s basically no way around crowds on Queen’s Day…so the more the merrier!

2. Prepare to dance and bring some booze to sip on (bars are packed!). DJ’s are set up on every square and street corner. Let’s not forget about the boats passing by with drunken party people and their own subwoofers. Dance 'n drink under the sun (well let's hope there's sun)! Or opt for a fresh Sangria or 1 EUR beer sold on the street ;).

3. Have a plan if you're meeting up with friends-phones don't work! The network is overloaded and even getting a text to someone takes multiple attempts or just never gets through. 

4. Walkin’ shoes. I religiously wore my sandals in California and successfully (and preferred to!) walked through plenty of cities, such as Paris, Rome, Cinque Terre, Barcelona and Berlin in the sandals where my toes feel most at home with no issues. Both times I’ve been in town to celebrate Queen’s Day I wore sandals. But the 2nd time, I got a nasty cut on my foot from a broken bottle. Fortunately I was faithful to #2 on the list…and I couldn’t feel a thing until I looked down and saw the trail of blood I was leaving behind. So…wear some closed-toe shoes, or if you are a sucker for sandals like me then prepare for crowds that don’t care about your bare little toes, broken beer bottles being kicked around and no trams or metros operating on Queen’s Day, so you will walk EVERYWHERE!! Sportin’ sandals? No worries, you won’t feel your feet anymore after 2-3 hours.

5. WEAR ORANGE!!

My mom joined us for Queen’s Day festivities last year…and she had a blast! Check it out…