Tag Archives: Tulips

In Search Of Tulips Near Amsterdam

Amsterdam was on the list of places that we wanted to visit before we set off on this two year trip. We even considered starting our journey here by taking the ferry from Newcastle, but in the end we decided that we wouldn’t have enough time to do it justice and get through Europe in time to make the most of the fixed start date on our Russian visas. Amsterdam stayed in the back of our minds though and when we were planning the last stage of our route northwards through Europe it felt like a logical place for our final long stay before returning to the UK. We’d booked our accommodation and train tickets before I realised that staying in the Netherlands in April meant tulips and I got very excited!

Tulips come in a surprising variety of shapes and colours

Tulips are not native to the Netherlands but were first introduced from Turkey in the 16th century and immediately became popular, so popular in fact that they were responsible for the world’s first economic bubble in 1637, usually referred to as Tulip Mania. Nowadays the Netherlands produces over 50% of the world’s cut flowers and a massive 80% of the world’s bulbs. Keukenhof is the showcase for the Dutch floricultural industry and every year 800,000 visitors from around the world descend between mid-March and mid-May to marvel at the spectacle.

During our visit in mid-April, most of the outdoor tulip beds at Keukenhof were not yet fully open. An exception was this beautiful display beside the lake

It takes about 90 minutes, but it’s straightforward to get to the Keukenhof gardens from Amsterdam – get the bus to Schipol airport, walk around the corner and board the Keukenhof Express bus straight to the main entrance. We bought the combined bus and entrance ticket from one of the Canal Company ticket offices in the city – at €28.50 it’s actually slightly cheaper than paying separately and saves time queueing at ticket offices on the day of your visit.

Squares of tulips in the indoor tulip display

I really liked the mixed beds with their pretty complementary colours

Each autumn seven million bulbs are planted at Keukenhof. Although tulips are the headline act, the garden focuses on a whole range of spring flowering bulbs also featuring a wide variety of daffodils, hyacinths and crown imperials. This also means that there will always be something to see as the different flowers bloom at different times. Obviously the timing is heavily dependent on the weather in the preceding months.

Keukenhof was filled with swathes of colour (top to bottom): tulips, daffodils and crown imperials

This ‘river’ of hyacinths smelt fantastic

To supplement the outdoor displays (and provide useful places to warm up on chilly spring mornings), there are three pavilions with flower shows. These change at various points through the season; when we visited one was dedicated to orchids, one to roses, and the main Willem-Alexander Pavilion had a mix of flowers including a wonderful range of tulips.

Orchid show in the Beatrix Pavilion

These crazy multicoloured roses were part of the rose show in the Oranje Nassau Pavilion

From the windmill at Keukenhof we got a view across a few bulb fields…

Bulb fields visible from the windmill at Keukenhof

This whetted our appetite for a bit more of an exploration into the bulb growing area, and what better to tackle such an enterprise in the Netherlands than by bicycle! We found a route online (PDF booklet in Dutch but the map is easy to navigate) which started outside Leiden Centraal station.

The Dutch bicycle network is marked by a number of junction points from where arrows point off to the neighbouring nodes. Here I am at point number 77.

The ride through the countryside along well marked cycle lanes and through pretty little towns was nice enough in itself but before long we passed through Voorhout and into the start of the bulb field area.

Cycling to the bulb fields (clockwise from top left): Some rather handsome hens beside the path; Julie passing a small windmill; bulb sculpture on a roundabout in Voorhout; Andrew cycling down the main street in Voorhout

In the first fields that we came to was a group of workers picking bunches of tulips. This is quite unusual as most of the fields here are destined for bulb production not cut flowers

Tulip fields in full bloom

The yellow of the daffodils is just as striking as the tulips

We came across one field where planting was underway

There were a few Dutch people cycling the paths as well but in general it was quiet until the route took us past Keukenhof and suddenly there were lots of tourists on bicycles (it’s possible to rent bikes at Keukenhof and do both activities on the same day).

Sometimes you could work out what had been planted in the field the year before as here where there are couple of lonesome tulips in amongst the hyacinths

Our return leg took us through the dunes which protect the Netherlands’ low lying land from the North Sea

Keukenhof was an unmissable day and it was also extremely busy, the day of cycling was fun and felt more relaxed, but we’re glad we did both.

A family trip to the heart of Dutch culture, Amsterdam

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One of the questions we ask ourselves in the summary posts is “Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?” and while it’s a fun way to think about the differences we experience every day, it’s probably the toughest question because we dearly miss our family and friends back home. With that said, we’ve become quite the easy solution to our family’s holiday destination conundrums, as they just ask where we’ll be at a future point in time and they come out to travel with us!

Julie’s parents joined us for a tour of northern China, her sister and family met us in Istanbul, and our great friend and quick-draw commenter extraordinaire Jo explored Vietnam and then Uzbekistan with us – and raised the quality of our editorial content with a couple of guest posts too ;o)

As we were discussing our final couple of months’ travel plans with my brother and family on Skype, we said we’d planned April would be mostly in Amsterdam. They’d booked a week or so off work in the same month but didn’t have any plans and we ended our conversation with a mutually nonchalant “we’ll look into possibly meeting up and let you know“. 2 hours later we received an ecstatically enthusiastic email from Clare that read “we’ve bought the ferry tickets – see you in Hamsterjam!” Aww yeah!

From the overnight cross-channel ferry we arranged a proper Dutch introduction to the Netherlands by meeting up at the blooming Keukenhof tulip and flower gardens! Left to right: Julie and I, Scott, Clare, Emma and Dan

Blessed with bright but occasionally brisk spring weather throughout their visit, we spent almost every day together even though our apartment was in the centre of Amsterdam and they’d booked a nice static caravan at the closest Eurocamp about an hour away. With an eye on the weekly tulip forecast, we decided to meet up at the Keukenhof gardens which was just starting to come into season..

Keukenhof – Tulips

Julie and I, Keukenhof, Holland, Netherlands

Julie and I arrived early – just enough time for a quick selfie with the tulpen! (‘tulips’ in Dutch)

The Keukenhof gardens are one of the biggest and busiest annual attractions in Holland, and we couldn’t think of a more naturally beautiful setting for a family reunion, and a typically Dutch start to their family holiday with fields of tulips, mini canals and a windmill!

Julie and I arrived a little bit early and did a quick whirlwind of the park taking far too many photographs of the tulips covered in dew glistening in the gorgeous early morning light.

It was still about a week or so too early for the tulips outside to be at their best, but there were an inexhaustible array of colours on display inside the greenhouses and outside in the other flower beds. The immaculate gardens reminded us of the manicured Japanese gardens, especially as there was an odd cherry tree in bloom here too! Clockwise from top-left: Tulips, tulips, everywhere we looked; Grape hyacinth; More tulips!; Cherry tree in beautiful full bloom; We weren’t the only ones that couldn’t stop taking photos!

We’d been eagerly anticipating our get-together as we hadn’t seen Dan, Clare and Scott for 25 months, and Emma, well, she’s 14 months old so for all we’d seen her on Skype, this was the first time we met. Scott ran to meet us with fantastic hugs but Emma took her time to decide if we were OK, and after about 10 minutes she’d made up her mind and started smiling!

Keukenhof Family Collage, Holland, Netherlands

Catching up amongst the tulips, and getting acquainted with my new niece! Clockwise from top-left: Playing with Emma and Scott; These clogs are big enough for 3! – Julie, Scott and I; Walking Emma with her Dad; Playing the (fake plastic) cheese drums with Scott!

Zaanse Schans – Windmills and old Dutch industry

The windmills of Zaanse Schans, Holland, Netherlands

The windmills of Zaanse Schans – the powerhouses of Dutch industry in the 18th and 19th centuries

Continuing our immersion in Dutch culture, we spent a day at Zaanse Schans which is a free, open-air museum showcasing the beginnings of the early industrial way of life from the 18th and 19th centuries. We especially liked the diversity of the windmills that have been saved from dereliction and destruction across the Netherlands and have been lovingly restored. I hadn’t really considered it before, but windmills can be used for all sorts of processes besides milling grain into flour, such as grinding spices, cutting trees up as a sawmill, stirring milk to make cheese and even making pigments for paint!

Inside the spice grinding windmill, Zaanse Schans, Holland, Netherlands

The spice grinding windmill was much bigger inside than we expected – it had space for 4 sets of crushing wheels all powered by the sails above. The ropes hanging down from the ceiling control the gears which start and stop each station – very clever. Oh, and it smelt wonderful inside!

Clog making demonstration at Zaanse Schans, Holland, Netherlands

Scott and I were fascinated by the clog making demonstration where they took a quarter chunk of tree and turned it into a shoe in about 6 or 7 minutes! We watched it twice and we took lots of photos, then Scott modelled some from the gift shop – what an adorable little poser!

While entrance to the area and the demonstrations are free, most of the space in the windmills and attached barns is given over to gift shops which usually have free samples! As we’d brought our own lunch it turned out to be quite a cheap family day out too.

Alkmaar – Cheese Market

Alkmaar wholesale cheese auction, Alkmaar, Holland, Netherlands

The start of the weekly “kaasmarkt” or cheese market in the small town of Alkmaar just north of Amsterdam. Here two members of the cheese carriers guild carry out special cheese barrows which weigh about 25kg each – later they’ll be loaded with 8 of the bright orange Gouda rounds, each weighing 13.5kg, that’s 130kg total!

Having frolicked through the tulips at Keukenhof and watched clogs being made in a windmill at Zaanse Schans, the only remaining experience on our fun-packed family friendly tour of Dutch culture was cheese – and we hit the jackpot!

The small town of Alkmaar is one of only 4 in the Netherlands that regularly reenacts the cheese auctions of yesteryear. This weekly show starts at 7am when the “kaaszetters” or cheese-setters unload the cheese from the local dairies onto pallets laid out in the Waagplein outside the Waaggebouw for inspection. “Waag” means weigh, “plein” means square and “gebouw” means house or building.

5 minutes before the cheese market opens, Alkmaar, Holland, Netherlands

Waiting for the cheese bell to toll – the guys in white with the coloured straw hats are the cheese runners, the guys in light blue to the left are cheese-setters (they handle the cheese directly), and the two men dressed in white coats to the far right are samplers who negotiate the prices

At 9:30 the “kaasvader” or cheese father calls the roll of cheese carriers and divides them up to cover the area of the market. At 10:00 on the dot the market officially opens with a toll of the bells from the Waaggebouw tower, and the traders and samplers start working their way around the orange carpet of creaminess knocking, sampling with a corkscrew-like doweling rod and finally cutting a cheese from each batch in half to check the number of eyes, or holes, present.

Cheese sampling, Alkmaar, Holland, Netherlands

Here a sampler and trader inspect a cheese chosen at random from a pallet in the market

Once each batch of cheese is inspected a ritual of hand slapping is performed – kind of like a cross between a handshake and a game of pat-a-cake, where the sampler and trader shout prices back and forth until they finally grasp hands in agreement – the wholesale price of the batch is set and must be weighed before purchase. This is where the cheese-runners come in..

Cheese runners at full pelt, Alkmaar, Holland, Netherlands

Having transported the cheese to the Waaggebouw for weighing, the cheese-runners then run it back through the market to be loaded onto the trader’s cart. Photo credit: Scott Freemantle

After all the excitement of hand slapping and running cheeses hither and thither we wandered the narrow cobbled pedestrian streets of Alkmaar, which felt like a mini Amsterdam with its narrower canals and leaning narrow houses.

We ended another lovely day together with Scott’s favourite lunch: cheese sandwiches – what else!