On Wednesday, 24 March, Brad and I spent our day seeing more sights in Amsterdam. We started out, after breakfast at the hotel by heading for Keukenhof Gardens. To get there, we had to take the light rail to a metro stop, the metro to the airport, and a bus from the Airport to Keukenhof Gardens, located outside Lisse, Netherlands. I've always thought one of the interesting things about the Netherlands is the fact that this country seems to have two names - "the Netherlands" and "Holland". And the fact that the people from there are known as Dutch, and speak Dutch, has always perplexed me. 
One of the most famous things about Holland is the tulip fields and gardens. Keukenhof Gardens is by far the largest and most famous of these. Knowing we were very early in the season, going there just a week after they opened for their two month season, we were optimistic that we'd still have lots of flowers to see. And we did! It was early in the bloom though, and many flower beds still only had dirt and many had green shoots coming up. You can see from the picture below that the surrounding fields have nothing blooming yet. Even without the full blooming gardens we had a great day - it was sunny, in the sixties, and altogether a beautiful day to spend walking around outside. Plus one advantage of being early in the season was there were no crowds - always a big plus! I would like to go back some day when everything is in bloom and see the gardens and the tulip fields in their full glory, but was happy to just get the chance to see any of it. If Brad's trip back from the states had been two weeks earlier, nothing would have been open. 
Another highlight of our day was getting to see the orchids blooming in the Orchid house. Orchids are my favorite flower, though tulips are not far down the list of my favorites.
We did see many of the things represented at Keukenhof that the Netherlands is well known for:
Clogs
Windmills
Tulips
No comments:
Post a Comment