Holland Events

King's Day (Koningsdag), 27 April -- or the 26th if the 27th is a Sunday -- is the largest event in the Dutch year by a distance. The country dresses in orange for the House of Orange-Nassau, and the vrijmarkt makes it the one day when anyone may sell on the street without a permit or VAT, so entire cities become a flea market. Amsterdam's canals fill with boats. Accommodation is booked out months ahead.

Liberation Day, 5 May, marks the end of the German occupation and is preceded on the 4th by Remembrance Day, when the country observes two minutes of complete silence at eight in the evening. The contrast between the two days is worth experiencing.

The bulb season, roughly late March into May, is not an event but behaves like one: the fields flower, the gardens open, and the whole western countryside fills up for a few weeks.

Carnival in February or March is a serious and genuinely local affair in the Catholic south -- Maastricht and Den Bosch above all -- and barely registers north of the rivers.

Sinterklaas on 5 December is the main gift-giving occasion for Dutch families, more so than Christmas, and is domestic rather than public.