It rained during the night but we left the campground on a lovely morning and drove to Keukenhof. We were waiting for our friends from Tilburg to join us, so we had the opportunity to see the people coming through the gates. And there were a lot of them. Many Dutch people of course, including a huge contingent of elderly folks in wheelchairs, each with a person to push. But we heard English (both from the UK and the other side of the ocean), French, German and several unidentifiable languages. Thousands of people coming to see flowers.
But what flowers! We knew how spectacular these gardens are because we’d been here. Keukenhof is in the area of The Netherlands where a lot of tulips are grown. There is nothing more beautiful than fields of tulips – except the gardens. Each tulip grower is given some land to plant displays – and since they can utilize huge numbers of bulbs, the gardens are all beautiful and different. There seemingly are hundreds of these displays. Ron took 200 pictures and even then, there was a lot more to see than that indicates! We’ve posted some pictures of drop-dead gorgeous garden scenes as well as some unusual looking tulips.
We had a lovely day with our friends, Cees and Maartje. Being Dutch, they were not quite so taken with displays as we were, having lived with their likes all their lives. We saw varieties of bulbs we’d never seen before, a building full of beautiful orchids, another filled with chrysanthemums of colors not supplied originally by nature and more. The funny thing is that the Dutch growers have perfected the growing of plants that are so oddly colored that they look fake! Adelle says that she’s seen similar flowers made of silk and thought that they looked too fake! Shows how up-to-date she is!
About 3 p.m. we all decided it was time for coffee (and apple pie) and then we should leave. Good timing. It started to sprinkle as we finished our coffee, and by the time we got into our RV, it was pouring lions and elephants. We were lucky. We could walk to our RV and get in. I felt sorry for those of the hardy Dutch who came in on bikes…and for the people who had to get onto the big tour buses – waiting their turn to get in out of that downpour. Our thoughts turned to all those pensioners who needed not only to get onto a bus, but were being wheeled about and had to get the wheel chairs into the bus too! Cold and wet! The number of vehicles leaving was mind-blowing. You’ve all been in a situation like that when everyone leaves after a concert. It can take forever. But the European system of round-abouts allowed the traffic to flow with much less of a delay than a system of traffic lights would require.