Guardian Lion

Of course I know that there are mansions all over the world that have two guardian lions in front of the entrance, but these have another connotation in my mind.

Normally on April the 30th we used to celebrate the birthday of our Queen Beatrix and this day was our national party called 'Queensday'.

Everyone in Holland wears at least one crazy orange colored item to honor our national color 'orange' (Our Royal family is called Orange, so that explains it)

Anyway, at big national events as soccer championships and Royal celebrations our people and streets turn completely orange and everyone is permitted to 'garage sale' their attic stuff on the street without an official permit, called 'free market'

When Queen Beatrix was succeeded by her son King Willem Alexander, as an honor to his mother he celebrated his Kingsday - his own birthday - on hers, till two years ago.

Resulting in the fact that many tourists are not aware of this shift and come totally dressed in Orange to Holland to party along with us, but are the only ones that wear the orange dresses as we already partied on the 27th. Haha.

Thankgod there are some folks who arranged special parties for these poor 'old lonely planet book' victims so they didn't come for nothing.

Oh yes… why the lions? Well normally they would have been completely dressed up and orange too, but not today ;-)