NL celebrates King's Night

The traditional pre-party to King's Day, 'Koningsnacht' will be celebrated in Dutch cities like The Hague, Utrecht and Amsterdam. Several hundreds of thousands of partygoers are expected to descend on city centers Friday night. Utrecht will kick off the celebrations at 6 p.m. with the opening of the 'vrijmarkt', or: free market. Thousands of stands will be selling food and drinks as well as general bric-a-brac, and various artists will be performing live. The center of Th Hague will be host to the Life I Live festival at 7 p.m. The festival has nine stages, and dozens of bands will be playing including Jett Rebel, Moss, Spider Rico and Daryll-Ann. It is expected to draw 200,000 visitors. Amsterdam will be partying on a smaller scale. Between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m., people will be able to go to some parties in the center with live music. For the firs time this year, a license for a vrijmarkt in the Koningsnacht could be requested. A spokesperson for the municipality says nobody really registered for this. There will be several markets in town on King's Day on Saturday, however. Elsewhere in the country, Rotterdam is having an Organ concert as well as a two-day festival including a magic performance, Utrecht will be pumping hits from the 80s and 90s and Maastricht will have fireworks. Groningen is expecting 100,000 visitors for markets. The sale of alcohol in cans and glass bottles is banned, and it will be forbidden to park bicycles in most streets. Because of the large number of expected partygoers traveling to the big cities, there will be extra trains and buses running via an amended service. Trains between Amsterdam and Eindhoven will be increased especially, and international trains as well as the Intercity Direct will not be running to and from Amsterdam Centraal. For this reason, international travelers are advised to depart an hour earlier. Intercity Direct will make room in Amsterdam for other trains. The service will only be running between Schiphol and Breda. Station Amsterdam RAI will be closed for trains and metros on the 26th of April. Travelers will have to go through Amsterdam Zuid. Travelers from Amersfoort are recommended to go to Amsterdam Zuid via Utrecht Centraal. On King's Night, frequent night trains will also run from The Hague to Leiden (where passengers can change trains to Amsterdam) and to Utrecht via Gouda.