Day Trip to the Tulips and Delft: April 18, 2009

Michelle, Ali and I decided not to stay in a hostel this weekend and do our tulip experience in one day. And that was a great idea! Although extremely tired by the end of the day, I was so glad to be back in Maastricht for the night.

We left super early and took the train up to Leiden to go to the Keukenhof. The Keukenhof is a massive landscaped tulip garden up in South Holland. It is not the fields and fields of tulips that you are thinking of, but still it is beautiful and colorful. After we had arrived in Leiden, we got in line to take the bus to the gardens. Thank god we had bought our tickets online because we would have had to wait a lot longer!

The bus ride was scenic because 92% of the world's tulip bulbs are grown in this very small area of South Holland so use your imagination on what that was like….absolutely beautiful! We entered the Keukenhof and it is amazing! The mix all types of flowers/colors/plants and it is breathtaking. I can't describe it, you will just have to look at my pictures. We stayed in the gardens for about 4 hours, and climbed a windmill, took a million pictures, and ate ham broodjes (ham sandwiches) and ice cream.

After the Keukenhof, we headed to Delft to get some world famous Delft Blue pottery. Delft is a really charming canal city with a great market and cute shops. Unfortunately, the pottery warehouses were closed by the time we got there, but Delft was still great. We were able to find some open stores and get what we needed. We then found a cute café (Billy Bear's haha) and sat in the square and ate dinner.

Our little Holland Day trip was awesome and I think I took some really great pictures!

I love and miss you allJ Tot ziens!

Betsy