... And More Flowers (Keukenhoff, Part Two)

More flowers!

The photos in this post were all taken with my Cannon DSLR camera. Off and on throughout the day I played with focal depth. It worked especially well in the morning, when all the flowers were dappled with dew. 

Tulips with dewdrops

Another tulip

White, spiky tulip

Sweet snowdrops

Bell-shaped spiky flower

White spiky flowers

I also took lots of photos of the flower beds. Again, many are similar to the last post's photos, but I couldn't stop myself from taking so many photos. And trust me, I'm only posting about 10% of the photos I took! 

Rows of flowers that go on forever

More tulips

An amazing array of color

Flowers and a statue

Flowers at a wonky angle

Flowers, flowers everywhere!

Hey! How'd that yellow guy get in here?  

I took a few photos from atop the working windmill. There was a terrific field of red tulips just beyond the garden's perimeter. You could purchase tickets for a tour through the fields by way of canal boat, but the line for tickets was formidable. 

An up close shot of a working windmill

Fields of tulips

I took a photo of the flower-made Van Gogh self portrait without my big mug in the way. You can see the people in the background in the top of the picture, to give you a good idea of the size of the portrait. 

Vincent Van Gogh

Thankfully, it never properly rained the day we visited Keukenhoff. It did, however, threaten to rain on several occasions. When it threatened to rain, we (and the thousands of other visitors) would duck into the exhibit halls. I was happy to see that Bill was with me in Holland after all! :-) 

See, Bill was with me all along! 

Inside the many exhibit halls, I took quite a number of exotic flowers and floral displays. 

Big ol' flower

Snapdragon? Venus Flytrap?

A bunch of spiky flowers

Where's Waldo (AKA Jen)?

In the late afternoon, we realized the parade we had planned this whole weekend around would be so crowded that we would be able to see nary a float. We stayed inside the garden instead, hoping the crowds would diminish as the parade began. Sadly, that didn't seem to happen, but at least the weather held steady. 

We found a quirky 'selfie garden' with mirrors to use for selfie taking...

A right proper selfie!

And giant clogs for comedic photos. Are you laughing? No? Oh, well! 

Those are some big shoes to fill!

As we were heading out of the park for the day I started taking photos at wonky angles, just for the heck of it. Only two photos turned out interesting enough to post; the rest were just weird! 

Cherry blossoms in bloom 

Brian photographing tulips

A few last landscape photos were taken as we meandered our way out, back to the bus, and towards a fun pub for beer-y sustenance. 

Follow the yellow (red, blue, white) brick road

A penultimate view of Keukenhoff

Goodbye Keukenhoff!

Tulips, Tulips, Tulips (Keukenhoff, Part One)

Our Saturday in The Netherlands was all about flowers. Seriously, all. about. flowers! 

Typical view from the train

The friends I travelled with specifically booked this particular weekend to go to Keukenhoff, a famous flower garden, as it is the peak weekend for flower viewing. There was a flower parade (similar to California's Rose Bowl Parade on New Year's Day), flowers, and festivities. The only downside: because it's the premier flower viewing weekend of the year, the visitors seemed to outnumber the flowers on occasion! 

Rows and rows of organized flowers

I had so many flower pictures, I decided to post twice about the Keukenhoff flower show. In this post you will see all of the photos from my iPhone, and the next post will be all photos from my - clears throat - real camera. But in all honesty, iPhones take such good pictures anymore, I often opt not to take my big, heavy DSLR just for ease of getting around. 

A riot of flowers

The colors of the flower gardens were out of this world! The pictures mostly do them justice, but the wafting of their scent made the experience truly spectacular.

Very tall flowers

Not all flowers were this tall, but you can see that there were some beds that stood 2 - 3 feet tall! You can also kind of get the sense of the crowds. The lines at the food carts were long, but the lines for the loos were even longer - up to a 20 minute wait! And if you decided you didn't have to go each time you saw a long line, you eventually ended up waiting in line praying you can hold it long enough to get to a stall. Not saying' that happened to me, but...

Very tiny flowers

I had an amazing Dutch hot dog at one of the stalls. It was paired with some sort of cheesy mustard that came out of a packet much like ketchup and mustard do in the states. I couldn't get the packet to fully open, so I had one of Regine's cousins (who is Dutch and lives in Holland - they came out and spent the day with us) open it for me. She proceeded to squirt the entirety of the packet onto my sausage. I tried to stop her half-way as I wasn't sure I'd like the sauce, but she said, "No, you will like it!" And gosh darn it, she was right! Reg's husband Brian liked the sauce so much he bought a bottle of the stuff at the local store before we flew home! 

Van Gogh in flower form

There was a long line to get onto the viewing platform to see the Van Gogh. Once we arrived on the platform, we took a quick handful of pictures, then got down to keep the line moving along. 

Even more flowers

There was such a varieties of flowers! 

Interesting bell-shaped flowers

I attempted a selfie, but I have determined that my arm simply isn't long enough to get my big head and the background in at the same time. This photo turned out okay, but the yellow flowers went on a lot farther… I couldn't get my chin and the rest of the landscape into the same picture! 

Selfie amongst the flowers

Floral close-up

Flowers, flowers, flowers

There were a number of indoor exhibitions, but we really didn't stay in any of them for too long due to the crowds. I liked the flower arrangement below, and had Reg take a quick photo of me. (Again, not so good with the selfie-taking!) 

An interesting art installation

The outdoor arrangements were really interesting as well. Sometimes a riot of color and size, other times a large bed of one type of flower. Very pretty, all of them.  

More of the really tall flowers

More bell shaped flowers

At one edge of the flower garden (which was acres and acres in size) sat a beautiful, working windmill. Brian and I even went up to the top to see the flowers from up high. A few photos from the top of the windmill will be in my next post. 

Windmill! 

And last, but not least, I stole one of Reg's photos. From the top is Brian (Reg's husband), Lucas (Reg's nephew), and me, all playing photographer! 

Brian, Lucas, and I getting our paparazzi on

An Afternoon in Amsterdam

We arrived in Holland so early that first day, that even after spending several hours walking around the suburb our hotel was located, we still had plenty of time to take the train into Amsterdam for a good chunk of the afternoon. 

Canal boat

After a quick coffee stop for caffeine (did I mention we all left VERY early that morning), we hopped on a canal boat tour. Time well spent! Unfortunately, the window at my seat wouldn't open, so there is a bit of glare in some of these photos. 

Canal

Every where you looked, the views were amazing! The architecture, boats, foliage, everything was just like out of a storybook. There was even a tall ship, but alas, it was on the other side of the boat and I only got a photo through out longboat's "sun roof.

Tall ship as seen through boat's roof

There were so many bridges. They seemed so low, but our boat was built to go through them easily. They warned us at the beginning of the tour, though, that it would be good not to stand up through the sun roof due to the low bridges. 

Canal bridge

Bridge after bridge after bridge

Some of these pictures are of specific things they were announcing, but after a while I forget what photo was of what. I'll just have to enjoy the photos as is. 

Yet another canal 

There were a lot of skinny, tilted buildings with dates on them dating as far back as the 1600s. If you look at the top of the two skinny buildings below, you may notice the arm and hook protruding off the building, just above the top window. Those hooks have been used since the build of the houses to move supplies and furniture into the upper stories of the buildings. 

And if you look really closely, each building is within inches of each other, but aren't actually attached! 

Tiny, wonky houses all in a row

After our boat tour, we started walking towards the Van Gogh museum. Along the way, we avoided the red light district, but still saw a brothel with a neglige-wearing working woman lazily dancing in the front picture window, looking bored out of her mind. We saw a few coffee shops that didn't sell coffee but had plenty of patrons (if you know what I mean!), pubs, shops, etc. We also saw a beautiful horse drawn carriage. 

Horsies

We walked and walked and walked for at least 20 minutes towards the Van Gogh museum and realized it was close to 6:00 and we still had at least 10 minutes to walk before arriving at the museum. We were all running out of steam, so we decided to turn around and head back toward the train station in search of dinner.  

View from a bridge

We found a great spot for a beer, but eventually made our way back to Leiden for dinner. Once back near our hotel it was after 8:00 and I was so tired. Like, really, really tired. I opted out of dinner and headed up to my room to call it a night. I wan't hungry and wanted to be well rested for the next day's adventure.

View from another bridge

It was a great first day, and I looked forward to the coming days! I was a little bummed we didn't get to either the Anne Frank house or the Van Gogh museum, but the friends I was with had either been there or, in the case of the Anne Frank house, didn't want to get majorly bummed out. I figure I may be able to talk Bill into going back for a weekend spent just in Amsterdam :-) 

Church tower

To The Netherlands!!

Some friends were heading to Holland for the Spring flower show and I decided to tag along for the ride. Bill didn't have much desire to see the tulip fields, so he waved me goodbye at the airport before heading off to work.

Lots of bikes! 

After a short, but early (VERY early) flight and an almost as short train ride, we arrived in Leiden, a suburb of Amsterdam and our home away from home for the next few nights. I immediately noticed all of the bikes - tons of them - parked two and three bikes high outside of the train station. We would see far more bikes before the weekend was through. They're old-timey one to three speed granny bikes and they were glorious. Except, of course, when you almost get run over by one. Not saying that happened, but...

The first of many windmills

We also spotted our first of many windmills as we walked around Leiden, waiting to connect with the rest of our group who had taken various routes to get there. 

Canal in Leiden

Leiden was beautiful! Although not Amsterdam, it had gorgeous canals, lots of wee boats, and a terrific little cheese shop that helped stave off our hunger. 

CHEESE!!!

We even found a random totem pole. Near the totem pole was a cast iron art installation that included, among other things, a coffee pot, pair of shoes, dog poo, and a dildo. Seriously.   

Because when you think of Holland, you think of totem poles...?

It was a beautiful afternoon and around 1:00 all of the small canal-front cafes were starting to open for the Friday night festivities. 

Canal front cafe

We did not realize it until we arrived, but it was a 3-day weekend in Holland. Monday was King's Day, which we gathered is a national holiday similar to our 4th of July. There were lots more people out and about all weekend and town squares were getting ready for concerts, carnivals, and the like. Most of which was to take place on Monday, the day we were flying back home. Oh well, I still had quite a few tasty beers and food items. 

Mmmm beer!

Unfortunately, I was too full when we stumbled upon an oliebollen stand, but that didn't stop the others! The smell of fried dough and powdered sugar was as intoxicating as it was nauseating!

Brian eating oliebollen (fried donuts with powdered sugar)

Reg trying the oliebollen

All in all, a great start to our trip!