King's Day

King's Day marks the monarch's birthday and works in practice as a national street party. The part that makes it worth planning around is the vrijmarkt: for one day anyone may sell anything on the street without a permit, so pavements fill with families laying out blankets of toys, records, clothes and old furniture, and children charge for lemonade or for playing the recorder badly at passers-by. Orange is compulsory in the way that unwritten rules are. In Amsterdam the canals fill hull to hull with boats that barely move, each with a sound system. Every town of any size does its own version.

What you actually see

• The vrijmarkt - a country-wide street sale, best early in the morning.
• The boats - canals full of slow-moving decks and speakers in the bigger cities.
• Orange everything - clothing, hair, food colouring, with no irony available.
• King's Night - the evening before, which in some cities is the bigger night.

When to go

Go out early for the flea market, ideally before nine, because the good things go and the party takes over by midday. Leave central Amsterdam before the evening unless you want to be in it. Book accommodation months ahead at any price, and expect trains and stations to be managed with queues and temporary closures.

Honest expectations

Central Amsterdam is genuinely uncomfortable: shoulder to shoulder by afternoon, streets ankle deep in cans and plastic by evening, and almost no public toilets. Prices double where they can. Museums, shops and offices are shut, so there is no fallback plan. Smaller towns give you the same tradition with room to stand.

Nearby

Every town runs its own; The Hague and Utrecht are strong on the night before.