Keukenhof: Holland's Most Famous Garden

Keukenhof is not only the most famous garden in Holland--it is without doubt one of the most famous gardens in Europe.  "Keukenhof" means "kitchen garden," and that's what it was in the late Middle Ages.  Since 1949, however, they have grown a lot more impressive things here than just cabbages and turnips!

I was unprepared for how overwhelmingly beautiful the gardens were.  Tickets are fairly pricey and during the two months that the gardens are open, close to a million tourists arrive in big buses to see the tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths.  The admission was worth every penny, though!  I've never seen such an abundance of spectacular flowerbeds in my life.

Borders of green grass surround many of the flowerbeds, and a glade of trees covers much of the gardens. There is also a lake with a fountain and canals with swans.

Look at the reflection of the tulips in the water!  They were so bright in the afternoon sunlight that they reminded me of florescent city lights reflecting off wet pavement on a rainy day.

I took 111 pictures during the three hours Diana, Caroline, and I spent at Keukenhof!  By the time we left, I felt like my brain was so saturated with brilliant colors that I needed to live in a black-and-white world for a few hours to recover.

I noticed that every hyacinth in Keukenhof is individually propped up with a thin metal skewer--what a lot of work for the gardeners!  It makes quite the difference, though.

I was so grateful that Diana and her friend could be in Holland when they were because Keukenhof could not have been more beautiful.  The tulips were at their absolute peak.

And there were even still daffodils.

The light was almost blinding on the tulips--especially the red ones.

A mix of different kinds of daffodils.

The gardens continued on and on.  Each time we turned around a corner there would be another unbelievable stretch of flowers, sometimes with "rivers" of purple grape hyacinths winding between the groups of tulips.

The gardeners normally plant the flowers in monochromatic patches, but here they mixed different colors together.

Rows of tulips under blossoming trees.  It seems unreal, doesn't it?

At the edge of Keukenhof there were the most spectacular bulb fields I have ever seen, growing not far from the streets of the town of Lisse.  They looked like a carpet made from tightly woven bands of color.

The day after Keukenhof, Diana and  Caroline returned to England.  We spent the morning in the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and then we took a long train ride to the airport in Eindhoven.  We brought a picnic along for the train.  It wasn't quite as nice as our picnic by the tulips, but who can complain about a loaf of marzipan raisin bread and green fields full of sheep and little lambs outside the window?  We also broke up the journey by stopping in 's-Hertogenbosch for a quick tour of the fabulous late Gothic Cathedral of Sint-Jan.  Diana and Caroline presented me with this box of chocolates, which they had bought in Amsterdam.  It was so kind of them!  Diana had handpicked all the chocolates--pistachio, nuts and all dark chocolate, exactly what I like.  I ate only one each day to make them last, and so I had chocolates through Easter!