Every year the Dutch celebrate the Queen’s birthday by dressing up in orange and partying on the streets. At Leaseweb, we thought it would be great if our (international) clients could also experience the orange craziness so we invited 30 of them to our annual Queen’s Night party. The Dutch Queen Beatrix celebrates her birthday on 30th April, but festivities start the night before.
On Sunday night the group gathered in the bar at Brasserie Harkema for drinks, followed by dinner. During dinner we handed out orange hats and hoodies and explained to our guests why we all dress in orange to celebrate the Queen’s birthday: it’s very simple; the Queen’s last name is ’orange’! Everybody happily dressed up and we drew quite a bit of attention in our orange gear.
After dinner we walked to the boat for a two hour tour of the Amsterdam canals. There is no better way to see the sights of Amsterdam and take in the special, festive atmosphere of the city. On the water we met a lot of people in orange decorated boats and everybody greeted each other, creating a magical atmosphere!
From the water we could see people standing outside cafés partying, there were open air concerts and dance parties on the shore and people dressed in orange everywhere. Everybody was in a very good mood, helped by the fact that the weather was finally improving to reflect Spring.
Onboard we enjoyed drinks and snacks, great music, good laughs and the views from the boat. Meanwhile we ‘educated’ our international guests on how to celebrate Queen’s night and day and where to go for the best music, food and bargains. We left the boat at Nieuwmarkt and joined a party there. On stage was a very glitzy disco band, we saw some great disco moves from our guests. This is where we left them to discover how the Dutch celebrate Queen’s Night and Day for themselves….