Day 274 - Bloomin' Holland

If there’s one thing the Netherlands is known for among people who know pretty much nothing about the Netherlands its tulips. So spending a year here I’d feel like a bit of a failure if I came home without visiting the infamous Keukenhof flower garden. Just as some background, the privately run park boasts 4.5 million tulips in 100 varieties, lovingly landscaped (and planted by hand) around 15km of footpaths over 32 hectares of land! It is literally a horticulturalist’s Disneyland.

It took us about 3 hours by train/bus to reach the park, near the town Lisse, south-west of Amsterdam. From the moment we entered the gates our eyes were bombarded with an explosion of colour and our noses with a waft of flower perfume. The red tulips first caught my attention, but as we wandered in and out of pathways, through garden mazes, up lookouts and around fountains I discovered so many colours and varieties I never knew existed. Some of the more interesting variety names included “Night Club”, “Teletubbies” and my personal favourite “Erupties” – these weird spikey lookin’ flowers with bunches of tulips hanging underneath a kind of crown of leaves much like a pineapple. What a name!

Erupties!!!

Generally, the landscaping was so impressive, with grouping of flowers either meant to startle by contrast (think blue, red and yellow all in a bunch) or to please the eye in shades of one colour (ie. purples, magenta’s, pinks and maroons). I was also impressed by the depth of the displays, with flowers of all different shapes and heights they seemed almost 3D.


  

It’s peak tourist season for the park at the moment (it’s open from march 24 to may 20, but the annual centrepiece parade was held yesterday) however the crowds weren’t too overwhelming and the place had quite a peaceful feel to it (even with the small children running around everywhere) courtesy of all the water features and the pleasant smell in the air. My only gripe was with the tourists who decided to completely ignore the copious “please do not touch the grass” signs and tromp all over it in search of the perfect photo op. Now, don’t get me wrong, we took our fair share of snaps (in fact, embarrassingly, all of us left with either a flat camera battery or a full memory card) but we were generally as respectful as possible. In contrast, there were grown women forcing their children out into the middle of big bunches of expensive, hand-planted flowers and lovingly manicured grass to get their photos. I felt sorry for the grass in a way, it gave the perfect uniform backdrop to the bursts of colour from the flowers but was pretty much taken for granted.

   


After about five hours in the park we decided to venture out into the actual tulip fields (commercial growing) for a squiz before heading home. This was the one time we may have ignored the signs… We were very gentle and light-footed but it was worth it actually be able to walk out amongst those rows and rows of brilliant flowers.

 




By then we’d had our fill of all things Dutch and touristy (if you count cycling to the station in the morning, eating ham rolls and poffejes in the park and drinking Heineken, taking photos of the fake windmill in the park, and of course all the flowers) we called it a day and made the 3 hour trek home. So it was more than 6 hours travel for about 6 hours of tulips. But as I said, it had to be done. Now all we have to check off the list are some heritage listed windmills and a spot of cheese rolling! Stay tuned…