We got up this morning and had breakfast with another couple who was staying at the Airbnb. The food was great and it was so interesting to chat with them along with our host! Seriously the first question we get from many people who found out we are American is “do you like Trump?”
Soon enough we were on our way to the airport, where we hopped on a bus to Keukenhof.
Let me just tell you how lucky we were to visit Keukenhof! It is only open a few weeks out of the year, and this year it opened on the 22nd of March. Just a few days ago! I felt so lucky all day long to be able to visit such a beautiful place.
Unfortunately they have had a cold winter, so many of the tulips were very behind. There were lots of sprouts and I can’t even imagine how it will look in a few weeks! At first we were a little bummed that they weren’t in bloom, but then we remembered how lucky we were to even visit at all. We decided that we will just have to come back another year to see all of the tulips!
They did have many tulips in bloom, though, and I enjoyed them so much. I can’t even tell you how many flowers I sniffed today, man!
It really was just the loveliest day! The weather was great, and we had the entire day at the park so we had no need to rush.
They have delicious food in the park and many places to sit. We sat and watched two ducks fighting which was sad but kind of interesting. In fact, we did a lot of sitting today! We felt so at peace. There’s just something about gardens that makes me so happy!
This was taken right before he almost fell in!
At this time of year, the biggest variety of tulips are found inside the greenhouse!
I also enjoyed listening to this thing. What is it? I don't actually know. Seems pretty Dutch to me, though.
A highlight of the day was seeing the windmill on site! A real Dutch windmill, my friends! We even got to climb up to the top of it. It was a gorgeous site!
We bought some hot chocolate to drink and watched a parade come through which was really weird. It was a bunch of male dancers dressed as janitors, and ladies on stilts dressed as tulips. We had no idea what was going on! It is fun that they do things like that though. It is also fun that they had shops throughout the park. We loved the wooden shoe store!
We took it easy at Keukenhof today, which was the perfect way to end our trip. Tonight we will stay again in Amsterdam, then we will fly home tomorrow morning. Sad!! I am excited for delicious food though. We have a lot of delicious food in Utah!
Overall our spring break was AMAZING! From visiting Independence Hall to backpacking Europe, I feel like we did a lot with the time we had. Honestly, we are exhausted! If we were to stay longer we would need more restful days like today. But really, our trip couldn’t have gone better and we are so grateful that we were able to go.
It is so funny, I never thought that my first trip to Europe would be to the region we visited. But when that cheap flight email came through and we did research, we figured it would be a place we’d enjoy. And we did! The consensus is that our favorite place we visited this trip was Amsterdam (Bruges as a close second) and that we really probably will come back to Amsterdam because we forgot to eat herring and buy wooden tulips. Amsterdam kind of has a seedy reputation because of the red light district, but we just stayed out of the area and it’s like the red light district didn’t even exist! Be warned though, we smelled a ridiculous amount of weed everywhere we went. Steer clear of those “coffee shops”! We were also warned about pickpockets, but we kept our important things in our money belts and felt perfectly safe the whole time we were in Amsterdam and Luxembourg. Brussels was a little bit sketchy, though!
We are excited to get back to Europe, however it won’t be in the near future. We have a Yucatán trip soon, then Hawaii in the fall, and something big up our sleeves for my “senior trip” next summer. It is still in the works, but it includes a visit to our favorite place in the world - the Jiangsu province!
Anyway, I could have ended this blog post a while ago, but thanks for reading on with my ramblings. Traveling rocks, guys! Don’t think we are rich or anything, doing the things we do. We’ve made sacrifices in our lives to live the life we live - I mean, we live in Bailey’s brother’s house with him! Which is surprisingly awesome, we love it there. I guess all I am saying is that traveling can be accessible for anyone if us poor college students can do it. Just follow those cheap flight emails, eat out less, and be spontaneous. Bailey actually pulled the trigger on this trip when we were trying to decide whether or not to book. He told me, “when else will we have time to do this? We will only get more busy!” (Which is scary to think, because we are already crazy busy.) I think that applies to everyone. Book that trip, my friend!
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