Netherlands

Yesterday was definitely the highlight of the whole trip!! We had a perfect day. We woke up “early” (8:00ish), got ready and headed out to the Keukenhof Gardens for the tulip festival. On our way to the bus, we stopped for a quick breakfast - a yummy spinach quiche for me and an omelette for Tim. We didn’t have the easiest time finding the bus stop or figuring out where to transfer, but we made it!

Amsterdam’s tulip festival runs each year from mid-March to early May. The Keukenhof Garden is the largest flower garden in the world with over 7 million flower bulbs planted each year. The gardens are famous for the tulips but there are also hyacinths, daffodils, lillies, carnations, orchids, and more. Surrounding the gardens are fields and fields of flowers.

We started our trip by renting bikes to explore the fields around the gardens. There are a bunch of different bike routes to take and the first thing we did was immediately take a wrong turn and ride for about 4 miles in the wrong direction. Not sure how it took us 4 miles to realize we were in a town and nowhere near the gardens, I guess we were having too much fun! We headed back and did the short 1 hour loop around the fields instead of the 3 hour loop we had originally planned!

After we returned the bikes, we entered the gardens. Wow! I was completely amazed the entire time. We wandered around for hours. The tulips are at their peak bloom around mid-April. I think we went at the perfect time. One of my favorite things to look at was the different life spans of the tulips, from the first bulb to the huge flower. The gardens are laid out perfectly so that tulips are constantly blooming and in one small garden you can see every stage of bloom. It was incredible. But after about 3 or 4 hours, we were both exhausted. We took the bus back home around 6:00.

Our night was also awesome. After we got ready, we headed out for dinner. One of my coworkers had told us we had to try the Turkish kabobs. There was a very highly rated Turkish restaurant a few blocks a away so that’s where we went! We got huge platters of lamb shawarma. It was so yummy but so much food.

After dinner, we tried to go to a pub that our hosts had recommended, one of the oldest pubs in Amsterdam, but it was closed (what pub closes at 9:00?!). We ended up hopping around to a couple of different pubs and met/hung out with a really nice Dutch couple for awhile. Before we knew it, we were only a few blocks away from the red light district. We had hated it so much the first night but that was a traveling and tired day. We decided to go to one more bar and walk down the strip one last time while we were in such a good mood. Again, it sucked, but we had a much better time the second time around after we had grown to love Amsterdam.

At this point, it was pretty late, so we headed back to the Jordaan district to our cute little canal apartment. On the way, we stopped for take away waffles!! Yum! The perfect ending to the perfect day.Read more