“The Most Beautiful Spring Garden in the World”

Today was a gorgeous, sunny, chilly day. This was our last adventure on this cruise and our last tour where everyone got to attend the annual tulip festival at Keukenhof Gardens - “The Most Beautiful Spring Garden in the World”. The gardens cover over 100-acres and are covered in spectacular tulips everywhere you look. Nearly 1-million visitors a year attend this event and today was not the exception. We arrived from our ship at 9:15am – like arriving at Disneyland when they first open on the weekend – and boy were we grateful to beat the noon time crowds!

It was hard to make much progress walking around because we were lured into stopping every few steps to take a picture.  It was so beautiful.  There were millions of tulips of every variety and color, so hopefully you won’t get bored looking at tulip pictures.

 

 

Between the 3 couples, we probably took over 100 pictures and sorry you can’t smell them.

On our last night at dinner, we reminisced about our week together on the river and shared our favorite moments.  Paul and Bev liked their excursion to Bruges the most and we all loved our day in Antwerp and the lunch we shared with Erwin and his family.  We talked about the other excursions we enjoyed including the trip to the tulip farm, the trip to the dairy farm and seeing how the cheese is made, and the beautiful day today at the Keukenhof Gardens.  Most of all we thought the best thing was all of us being together and enjoying each other’s company.  It was a wonderful trip with great friends, and we loved it. 

Now some interesting Amsterdam facts: 165 canals, 1,281 bridges, 2,500 houseboats, 6,800 16^th 17^th and 18^th century structures and, 881,000 bicycles – the world’s most bicycle-friendly city - where they outnumber the residents!

 

Although the Netherlands was cloudy, sometimes rainy and chilly, we all came prepared and loved this cruise – highly recommend it!