Keukenhof

Friday April 22, 2011 Day 296

We returned to the excursion company and redeemed our voucher for tickets to the Van Gogh Museum, a canal boat ride and Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden. The latter involved a 40-minute bus ride, after which we had about three hours in the gardens. The gardens only open about eight weeks every year and are famous for their tulips. They were absolutely beautiful.

Our bus driver took a detour to show us some of the fields

If you look carefully, you can see a little girl in this shoe

Keukenhof means Kitchen Garden, and is situated on 15th century hunting grounds. It was originally the source of herbs for the castle located there. In the 19th century, the Baron and Baroness Van Pallandt assigned two landscape architects to design the grounds around the castle. The present garden was established in 1949 by the then-mayor of Lisse, a nearby town. The idea was to present a flower exhibit where growers from all over the Netherlands and Europe could show off their hybrids – and help the Dutch export industry (the Netherlands is the world's largest exporter of flowers).

Wooden shoe boots - skating wooden shoes - pumps - Sunday wooden shoes

dike wooden shoes - garden wooden shoes - smuggler wooden shoes

After our return from the gardens, we walked down, located our canal boat tour company and boarded the next boat. We took an informative and interesting tour through many of the canals of Amsterdam, entering the port of Amsterdam as well. It gave us a lovely view of old and modern Amsterdam alike.

Check out the angle of these buildings one to another!

We ate an early dinner at an Argentinean steak house, then walked back to the hotel and retired early, as we were exhausted.