Day 14 - Tiptoeing Through the Tulips

Day 14 – Saturday, Apr 4 – Flowers Galore (and Beer Too)

Who knew it could happen? We awoke to a sunny reasonably warm day! This was our day to go to a tulip farm and the Keukenhof Gardens. I have to give full credit to Mark for knowing about this and arranging this tour.

At 10:30am (1030) we took a one-hour bus ride to the countryside outside Amsterdam. It’s tulip season all over the Netherlands!! Our first stop was the Penning family tulip farm. In short, we learned about the origin of the tulip in Kazakhstan, the spread through /turkey to western Europe and the ideal climate and soil for tulips in The Netherlands. We watched the intensely laborious methods of the past for growing and harvesting tulip bulbs for sale all over the world. This farm and many others do not do much with cut flowers, but rather plant and harvest bulbs as they multiply underground during the growing season. We were able to walk the fields and see many, many acres of tulips, for which there are over 700 varieties! After an hour … back on the bus to the Keukenhof Gardens (I had no idea what to expect in all of this).

Side story – our admission to the Pennington Farm included a drink at their little coffee shop/café inside their large “barn/warehouse” where they had various exhibits. I went to redeem my coupon for a hot chocolate (those who know me know I don’t drink coffee or other such drinks). Well, the coupon does not include hot chocolate, sir. What?! After some discussion with the young girls behind the counter, the “manager” stepped in and tried to explain the situation about “no hot chocolate.” It sounded very contrived to me, so I simply said, “OK. I understand, but I would like a hot chocolate with this coupon.” The manager gave the OK and I got a cup of hot chocolate. It saved me €3.50, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing! 

  

Next stop … Keukenhof Gardens. Marks swears we are going to love this. Now, it’s a Saturday on the Easter holiday weekend, and it is the first warm, sunny day in two weeks. I say this because as we drove closer to the Gardens, the traffic was quite congested. As we got close enough to see the parking lot, which was a very large open field, it looked like the parking lot of the Ohio State-Michigan football game (minus the tailgating). There were innumerable tour buses and many, many cars as well. We dismounted our bus with strict instructions to return at 4:00pm sharp (1600) [that’s a key feature of the story later]. Our bus driver – a very large Dutch man, I mean 6’9” and 300+ pounds large – led us to the entrance to the Gardens. Needless to say, he was easy to follow through the crowds, and no one got in our way.

Once inside the Gardens we decided to split up since it would be impossible to stick together in the crowds that were on the 80+ acres of gardens and manicured grass and trees. I went out on my own. Again, I will spare you the details and let the pictures do the talking. Sunny, warm, bright flowers everywhere, lots of happy people … I found myself simply smiling to myself and my inside felt happy, serene, peaceful. I took so many pictures I had to buy more memory for iCloud storage while there! I called Michelle (with 4-year-old Tim intervening for good measure) and Connor (from his hospital bed) for FaceTime so they could experience the gardens as I did.

A view from a bench where I ate my grab-n-go lunch wrap.

 

Mover views, particularly around a lake in one part of the Gardens. You can see the crowd. 

 

  

  

 

We met up at the exit a little before 4:00pm and walked back to the bus. Well, as with any group, there are always stragglers and our bus driver said we were 7 people short at 4:00pm. “We will wait five minutes.” A couple people straggled onto the bus, but several were still missing. At 4:05, the bus driver said emphatically, “We will wait until 4:10, then we will leave.” At 4:10pm there was no sign of the remaining 3 or 4 people. I went from the back of the bus to the driver who was standing outside and told him we had another tour at the Heineken brewery, and we were on a tight schedule. He said, “OK. We leave.” He was getting on the bus slowly, backing out slowly, hoping the stragglers would arrive. By now it was 4:15, and he put the bus in gear and took off. I did not hear this, but my family told me that one lady said, “My group is not here.” To which another person told her, “It’s the American’s fault.” Glad I didn’t hear that in the moment.

We got back to downtown Amsterdam and had to hustle to catch the right tram to get to a drop-off near the Heineken brewery since this was another timed entry visit (thanks to Mark for this one as well). Again, no details, but a fascinating tour that ended with some free beer (again, I tasted and it was so-so) and a 7^th story rooftop view of the city lights coming up at sunset. A security guy on the rooftop told us where to go for dinner to get neighborhood pricing and not tourist pricing. 

 

 

It was right around the corner. We did as he said and landed in O’Donnell’s pub – a real Irish pub serving Guiness in the shadow of Heineken headquarters and brewery. Wow, did O’Donnell’s have good food. I got the Overdose Burger – two meat patties, two slices of cheese, two layers of bacon, but only a single bun. I managed to muscle through it as it was my only meal of the day and I was hungry.

OK, now it is time for a bit of an explanation for our ride back to the hotel. We had taken the number 12 tram to the Heineken Experience, and we were left walking about a half-mile or more to the Experience. Kurt, our master online guy, found another way home … taking the M52. So, we walked a short distance to where we were to get the M52. We were at a tram stop and there was no sign of any M52 that we could see. The tram schedule noted the 7, 19 and 21 trams coming through the stop and none of them went to the central train station, our point of departure for the water-taxi to our hotel. We were discussing (debating? arguing?) the situation for several minutes. Do we just walk the distance to take the number 12 back to the hotel or not? Kurt kept saying incredulously that, according to Google maps, we were exactly where we needed to be for the M52.

Finally, a young couple interjected themselves into the conversation. The young man said that the M52 was the subway and that we were standing directly on top of the subway station below us. He directed us to a sign across the street not more than 50 feet away with a big blue “M” on it and an escalator down to the subway. Who knew the subway was underground?! They laughed, and we laughed. We later joked that the couple were probably standing by watching us, snickering and saying, “How long should we wait before we help these hapless Americans?” Now, the M52 took 5 minutes with only one stop, much better than walking to the number 12 tram then riding for 20 minutes weaving through downtown streets and making a half-dozen stops.

The M52 up-escalators brought us into the central train station very near the water-taxi (they are actually ferries for 300  people). Then it was back to the hotel to get some sleep after walking our usual 10,000+ steps for the day.

As we walked from the central train station to the water taxi/ferry, we could not help but notice that Laureen had stocked up on Heineken at the Experience, and Don had gone to the nearby ladies perfume shop to stock up on his supplies.