April 2023

Our anniversary amusement park tradition brought us to Utrecht, Netherlands, which we used as our home base for a week and took day trips into Amsterdam and to Efteling amusement park. With all of the canals and green space, Utrecht has a very quaint feel for a pretty large city. We didn’t intentionally schedule the trip around King’s Day, but getting to experience the city-wide celebrations ended up being the highlight of the trip.

Accommodations: We stayed at the Hunfeld in downtown Utrecht. It was a great central location for exploring Utrecht and a short walk to the train station. Our room was nice and had a cool view of the Dom Tower in the center of town.

Tours and Activities: The first two days of our trip mostly centered around King’s Night and King’s Day celebrations. King’s Day is a national holiday to celebrate the King’s Birthday. Everyone wears orange, and in Utrecht they celebrate by having music stages and vendors throughout the city and a city-wide “market” which was really a giant yard-sale. We took a canal cruise in the morning, and spent the rest of King’s Day wandering the city and jointing in on the festivities.

On our day trip into Amsterdam, the weather wasn’t great so we spent most of our time at the Rembrandt House tour/museum and the NEMO Science Museum. The weather was more cooperative for our day at Efteling amusement park, which we visited as this year’s anniversary amusement park tradition.

Other things we enjoyed in Utrecht were the Museum Speelklok and watching the Formula 1 race at a sports bar on the canal. We tried out lots of different restaurants while we were there and some of our favorites included Vintage Tapas Bar and Winj, Bunk, and Ruby Rose.