Keukenhof Holland

Wow... I loved Holland..

We started out Friday morning around 7:30am on April 15. Steve, Rebecca and Sarah came by to pick us up. We loaded up all our bags, cameras and goodies to eat along the way. The drive there was gorgeous. The country side in the spring time is breath taking, with lots of flowering trees, fields and fields of some kind of crop that has small bright yellow flowers and green, green, green everywhere. For as much brown as Arizona has, Europe has green.

The road trip took about 6 hours. When we arrived at our hotel, our rooms weren't ready so we had to wait a little before heading to Keukenhof. The hotel was very nice, clean and the service was good. The location of the hotel worked out very well for us. It was kind of in the middle between Amsterdam and Keukenhof. The name of the hotel is Hotel Chariot. I would recommend it to anyone.

Once we put our things in our rooms we left for the tulip fields. It was easy to find with the GPS so it didn't take but about 25 minutes to get there. We had purchased our tickets on line ahead of time, so that saved us standing in line. It's pretty nice to be able to just walk right up and go in.

Keukenhof is a very large park. It's beautiful and all that, but very different then the Tulip Festival around Notheren Washington. There were lots of tulips, green grass, tons of people, other spring flowers and these wonderful old trees that canopied some of the walk ways. It really is a wonderful place to see. The weather was great for us. Not hot, not cold. Couldn't of asked for a better day.

We sat and ate lunch in the cafe in the park, the food was just okay. Nothing looked like anything I'd ever had before so I wasn't to interested. I've tried lots of new foods while living here, but I want it to look like it's going to taste good. Oh well...

The park has a small area with barn animals in it for the kids, a couple gift shops, a couple shops where you can buy really good treats and an area for the kids to play. There is also two very large I'll call them green houses that are full of flowers. One is almost all tulips, the other is almost all orchids. The Germans really get into their orchids. Just about every German house has a few orchids in the window sill. I think I have four in our home.. I just love them...

After walking around the park we vertured over to where you could see some of the tulip fields. Alone the way was a very nice windmill and a display of wooden Dutch shoes. Of coarse you have to see wooden shoes in Holland! I was surprised that we didn't see more windmills. I would of liked to have gotten some pictures of different ones.

We must of left Keukenhof around 7:00pm because they were getting ready to close. The nice thing about staying later is then you can take pictures with out all the people in them. Five hours at the park was enough time to see everything and enjoy the views.

After leaving the park we went back to the hotel and ate dinner at a restraurant across the street. I wasn't very hungry and couldn't find anything on the menu I wanted so I ordered soup and ate some off Mason's plate. Everyone enjoyed the food and we all left full and happy.

We made our plans for the morning, said our good-nights to everyone and Mason and I headed to our room. Amsterdam here we come......

Sweet Dreams...