King's Day on a First Visit: Orange Streets, Quiet Room

Some first-time visitors plan their trip around King's Day without quite knowing what they are letting themselves in for. On the twenty-seventh of April, or the twenty-sixth when the twenty-seventh falls on a Sunday, the whole city turns orange. The canals fill with boats carrying music and dancing, the streets become one enormous flea market, and every square has a stage. It is a remarkable day, and a tiring one. By evening, many visitors want nothing more than a quiet room.

A peak date

King's Day is one of the peak dates in the Amsterdam calendar, along with Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the stretch from Christmas to New Year and large conference weeks. Every booking on a peak date carries a deposit of half the fee. The rates do not change: the line on her profile for your length is the line you pay, orange streets or not.

Book ahead

More visitors are in the city on King's Day than on almost any other day of the year, and more of them are writing at the same time. Booking ahead, several days before, gives a far better choice of therapist and hour than writing on the day itself. Any booking made more than twenty-four hours ahead carries a deposit in any case.

Getting around

This is the practical challenge. On King's Day, the centre of the city is packed from mid-morning, many streets are closed to traffic, trams are diverted or suspended in the centre, and walking a few hundred metres can take a long time. That affects arrival as much as anything else. The forty to sixty minutes that apply in central Amsterdam are harder to meet in the middle of the afternoon, when the crowds are thick.

For that reason, an evening booking tends to work better. By eight or nine, the crowds have thinned, the streets are being cleaned, and moving around becomes possible again. A session at that hour also fits the natural shape of the day: out in the orange streets until early evening, back to the hotel, a shower, and a quiet room.

The night before

The night before King's Day is a celebration of its own, with parties across the city. If you arrive that evening, a session on the night of arrival is a calm counterpoint to what follows, and it is worth booking early.

Staying near the airport

Hotels in the city fill up quickly for King's Day, and some visitors end up in the airport hotel cluster instead. That can work well. The airport side is quieter, and a session there is arranged with the journey time agreed first, as always. Allow for the fact that trains into the city will be busy in both directions.

If plans change

A peak-date booking follows the same notice scale as any other. More than twenty-four hours before the booked time, cancelling returns the whole deposit and moving the date once is free. Inside the last twenty-four hours, before she has set out, half is kept. If an official decision were to close the city's transport on the day, that would count as force majeure and the deposit would become credit.

Before she arrives

Take off the orange. Shower, warm the room, switch on a lamp. If the hotel entrance is locked because of the crowds, which some small hotels do on King's Day, say so in the thread and plan to come down to meet her.

What to expect of the evening

King's Day evenings have a particular atmosphere. The music fades from the canals around dusk, the crowds drift towards the stations, and the streets are left covered in orange paper and the remains of the market. By nine the city is noticeably quieter, and the hotels fill with people who have been on their feet since the morning. A session at that hour is less a contrast to the day than a natural end to it. Ninety minutes suits it well; two hours suits it better if you have no plans to go back out.

After the day

The day after King's Day is a quiet one across the city, with late breakfasts and slow mornings. If your trip continues, that is a good day to book a second session, and as a returning client a same-day hour or two at a city address is paid in full on arrival, provided the date is no longer a peak date.

What stays the same

Whatever the date, the therapist decides what a session includes, everyone present must be twenty-one or over, and the balance is paid at the door on arrival. King's Day changes the streets outside; it does not change the room.