King's Day

I promised you more pictures of King's Day. Well, here they are.
Each year my friend V. comes up with a bright idea about King's Day, formerly known as Queen's Day. She loves designing new outfits for us and thinks of a money making scheme on the side. Usually we only make a few Euros, but this year our income was about EUR 80,=, best ever!

The selling point this year was cupcakes. The woman on the stage playing our 'Queen Maxima', baked about 150 of them and our plan was to lure people to sit with the queen, have a cupcake and have their picture taken by us.

The idea was that 'Queen Maxima' would stand on her pedestal and her three daughters (Amalia, Alexia and Ariane), played by us three girlfriends, would talk to bystanders and invite them over to sit with the queen.

King's Day always attracts large crowds in the streets as well as on the canals of Amsterdam. It is one of the most popular festivities in Holland throughout the country.

So, 'Queen Maxima' and 'Amalia' baked about 190 cupcakes in total. On King's Day's eve they decorated them with icing in different colors and little sweets. I tasted a few and they were yummy!

This is the super friendly dog of the sister-in-law of my friend V. He just likes to sit very close to you and to have physical contact.

We were located on a corner of the Haarlemmerdijk, a long shopping street in Amsterdam. Lots of people passed us by.

King's Day trinkets for sale in our national colors: orange, red, white and blue. Orange for The House of Orange, our royal family and the other colors appear in our national flag. Shown above are little ceramic clogs.

Little girl posing with the 'Queen'.

Diagonal line of people sitting on the quay.

Smiling couple posing with the 'Queen'.

Lots of people use the opportunity to go take out their boat and to ride the canals with lots of friends, music and sometimes smoke.

Posing tourists.

'Queen Maxima', with the princesses 'Amalia' and 'Ariane'. Miss V. on the right made all the costumes.

Triangles: collar, bodice and necklace with a miniature national flag.

The back of the costume: a white bow from the little apron. If you look closely, you can see that the waist of the navy skirt is done with cartridge pleating, an original way of handling lots of fabric dating back to Elizabethan fashion.