An echo of Bicycle Mark's blog.. for those of us not fortunate enough to have our own boat, the absolute best way of spending Queen's Day is by canal hitch-hiking! Thanks to people like Mark, all the rest of us get to spend Queen's Day the right way - ON the water! Miss Manners would say, load your backpack full of supplies to share with those who pick you up, anywhere between the Opera House to the Jordaan, along the canals of the Red Light or down by Leidseplein. Of course, those supplies dwindle quickly, but thanks to the generousity of many boat-hosts, you can continue to party all through the day. I like to find the bounty of borrelnootjes within my hosts craft and throw them into the gaping pie-holes of the unlucky land-locked Dammers.

Herein I will make a confession. Last year on Queen's Day, after one of the best day's of my life, I committed the greatest error known to an Amsterdammer.. I fell into the canal. But only up to my chest! I didn't go under! As I climbed from a boat that had brought us back to the Opera House from down by Nassaukade, I slipped and went down into the chilly.. unknown depths. ewww...The two guys on the boat caught me by my left arm, my two friends caught me by my right, and I, helpless and crippled with laughter, was drug up and ashore. Everyone was cracking up, and then we walked home, I dripping yet somehow (?) not feeling the cold night air. This is one of our fondest Queen's Day memories, perhaps the perfect way to wrap up the day of absurdities. Last year a fellow student who found out felt obliged to tell almost all our mutual friends, and others, what had happened to me. My only consolation was that 1) it was the Amstel, at least a free flowing river and not a stagnant ring canal, and 2) I vowed not to repeat that, and I didn't. NOT falling in will be the new tradition. I hope.