Tulip Season in Holland: Amsterdam, Zaanse Schans, Voldendam and the Keukenhof gardens

Next on the blogging agenda is our trip to Holland for tulip season! Spring time is the peak of tourism for the Netherlands because of their world famous tulip fields and gardens. If you've scrolled through the travel boards of Pinterest, you've probably stumbled across at least one beautiful picture of a big wooden windmill surrounded by colorful fields striped with tulips as far as the eye can see. Of course, we had to be one of the millions worldwide who venture to Holland from mid-March to mid-May to check out the Keukenhof tulip gardens. We had a lot of fun, but I will say that it was a good reminder that when you're traveling, sometimes you have to accept that expectations do not equal reality.

First off, let me go ahead and squash your dreams. Those beautiful pictures you've seen of the stripped fields of perfectly blooming tulips? You're probably not going to see them. Tulips aren't just sitting in the fields to look pretty, they're a major source of income for the people who farm them. For that reason, right before they hit their peak blossom, they're harvested to sell at roadside markets and for export. That beautiful field of color only last maybe one or two days. Also, tulips are very dependent on the weather. This winter was extremely mild, so they bloomed much earlier than usual. Typically, late April into early May is the best time to see tulips in the Netherlands, so that's when we planned to visit. Sadly, tulip season was already winding down at this point. Now, we still got some beautiful pictures and had a wonderful time, but we definitely had an inflated sense of what we expected to be doing.

Thank you Pinterest for another unobtainable goal. You can go ahead and pin this up there with your rustic bathroom pulled straight from the pages of BH&G and that super clever DIY project that will only cost you your entire paycheck at Hobby Lobby.

This was what the fields actually looked like.

Now, this is definitely not to say that you won't see beautifully colorful fields of tulips as far as the eye can see, but it is really more luck of the draw than a guarantee. Anyway, now that I've said my peace, let's jump into the basics.

Bus tour: Take Two

This has nothing to do with bus trips, I just love cows.

If you read about our trip to Switzerland, you may remember that I swore off bus trips forever. Well okay, for 4 months. You see, another major draw back of visiting during peak tourist season is that everything was crazy expensive and booked out months in advance. When I looked into booking a hotel in Amsterdam for this weekend back in January, crappy hotels were already going for over 200 Euro a night! Even camp grounds around the area were booked to capacity. If you want to plan a trip on your own, start early! A German tourist agency that caters to Americans but is not affiliated with the military was offering a pretty good deal on a weekend tour, so we went ahead and signed up. Luckily, I had also heard very good things about this particular company from a friends of mine at work, so I felt a little more comfortable with this trip. I do have to say, it was significantly better than our trip with the military affiliated agency. The bus was quiet and
comfortable and I really can't say anything negative about the tour company. I am already considering booking another tour with them later this year. My only mild complaint is that they fit A LOT of stuff into two days so it was kind of exhausting, but I knew the itinerary before I left so it's not really their fault that I didn't realize exactly what all we were signing up for.

First Stop: Cheese and Clogs

I won't lie, when I heard we were going to a cheese and wooden shoe factory, I thought it was going to be really stupid. But, it was actually pretty fun! We pulled up into this farm house complete with every animal you could imagine just wondering around. They were surprisingly friendly. This was about the time that our tour guide informed us that almost everyone in the Netherlands knows English because they are not allowed to dub over English programming in the Netherlands, only show subtitles. Since America is the main producer of movies and television, most of the people learn English by watching TV. Even these farmers out in the middle of nowhere knew English better than myself. They gave very funny and entertaining explanations as to how and why they still make cheese and shoes by hand in their little "factory" with 4 employees. We ended up buying homemade cheese and hand carved shoes. They certainly know how to appeal to tourists!

Amsterdam: Vegas of Europe

This is what they want you to think Amsterdam looks like.

Whenever we told someone we were going to Amsterdam, they always seemed to play it up like it was freaking heaven on Earth or something. Needless to say, yet again, or expectations of Amsterdam were much higher than our reality. It was so packed full of tourists, you could barely walk. The only real attractions that were advertised were the same gimmicky things that we avoided in London. The Anne Frank house averages a wait time of several hours. The bicyclists are giant jerks willing to run you over at a moments notice. The Red Light district was funny and interesting, but unless you're buying tons of weed or picking up a hooker, that's about all there is to do. We saw about 5 stag parties wondering around dressed as brides and stumbling over drunk, which led me to realize that Amsterdam is basically just the Europe version of Vegas these days. British guys go to Amsterdam to play out their version of The Hangover. Americans flock over to get the experience of smoking weed legally. Even the Dutch in Amsterdam dressed and acted much more American than the Germans.

We did take a little boat ride through the canals. It was pretty, but also kind of boring. Greg fell asleep at one point. We've heard that you have to experience the red light district at night sometime, and we may try to visit again on the off season. However, if we never make it back to Amsterdam while we're here, I won't be upset. It's not really our scene.

This is what Amsterdam really looks like: the back of people's heads.

Red light district

The houseboats here are more expensive than a McMansion in America. And they are only allowed to have a small number of them in the canals.

See the hooks above the doors? Our tour guide told us that they're meant for the Dutch women to hang their husbands out to dry after a night of drinking, hence the legend of the "Flying Dutchman." They're actually to help hoist furniture into the upper floors of the buildings. Because landlords were once taxed by the width of the building, the buildings are all very thin with small doors and extremely narrow and steep stairs!

Zaanse Schans: Greg's Favorite

I had never heard of Zaanse Schans before. Actually, all I had ever really heard about the Netherlands was that smoking weed is legal in Amsterdam and they are famous for tulips. I never really thought about windmills when I thought about the Netherlands. Greg, on the other hand, was really excited about the windmills. Zaanse Schans is a little town dedicated to educating people on Dutch heritage and the Dutch way of life. All of the windmills there were once sitting unused in different areas of Holland but have been moved and reassembled in Zaanse Schans to be used again. You can walk inside them and see how they work. We only went into one which was used to crush herbs and spices. They were crushing cinnamon when we were there. It smelled amazing. Zaanse Schans is also kind of a tourist attraction, but still a pretty interesting one. It kind of reminded me of the plantation houses at Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. It's a way to teach history that's also pretty entertaining.

You may notice the canals in a lot of the pictures. They pretty much cover all of Holland and are used as natural fences to keep the livestock in the square areas between them!

Voldendam: Tiny Town by the Sea

To be honest, we were pretty freaking tired by the time we got to Voldendam. We probably could have gone to bed right that minute. It was a gorgeously sunny day, but the windy was making it so I could barely even hold my eyes open. We were ready to be done touring at this point.

Voldendam was a cute little town on the ocean. It's a former fishing village known for its smoked salmon and eel. It was also pretty full of tourists. I did enjoy seeing the ocean for the first time in years but it would have been a little better if it was 80 degrees and I was drinking a margarita. Maybe when we go to Greece.

The whole town smelled wonderful like fresh cooked fish but we held off on eating because dinner was included with our hotel stay. I wish we hadn't because dinner was pork tenderloin which we don't eat. I'm sure it was delicious for people who eat pork but I was not a fan. By that point, I didn't even care, though. The second I saw our hotel bed, I passed out for the night.

I was about to blow away.

Keukenhof!

If you've never heard of the Keukenhof, it's a giant tulip garden in Holland that is open from mid March until mid May every year. Every year they have a theme. This year's theme was a celebration of the history of the Netherlands. We pretty much just spent the morning wondering around and taking pictures and eating. That's all we actually enjoy doing when we travel: walking, eating and taking pictures. We probably could have spent all day there, but the tour included a trip over to Haarlem to see the parade floats on display. Haarlem is the closest major city to the Keukenhof. It's nothing particularly special, as far as I could tell. Each year, there is a big parade where all the floats are decorated using flowers. After the parade, the floats are put on display in the center of Haarlem. By the time we got there, Greg and I were both ready to just be home. The floats were okay, but nothing too spectacular in my opinion. Also, the whole area was just SO crowded with tourists from all over the world. We ended up just ducking into an Italian restaurant and sitting there until it was time to go home. We were so exhausted and tired of being around people.

My husband has a Lego obsession. These are our new travel companions.

Parade floats in Haarlem

Over all, we had a really great time. However, if we go back next year, it won't be in a tour group. I don't have any major complaints about the tour we took other than it was just a LOT of stuff for one weekend. We were exhausted. We'd love to go back next year just for the Keukenhof because it was a lot of fun, but it's just so expensive to stay there overnight.

Greg summed up what it feels like to travel Europe very well the other night. Before you leave, you're constantly talking yourself up about it, thinking that you're going to have a blast the entire time you're gone. Then, while on the trip, you get tired and it's way more work than you expected it to be and nothing is going as planned and you start to think you were better off just staying at home and binge watching Sherlock on Netflix. But, by the time you get home and have a good night's sleep in your own bed, you stop and think how happy you are that you actually dragged yourself out of the house long enough to go experience something other than your couch for 48 hours straight. Traveling isn't the non-stop enjoyment people like to fantasize about. Actually, it's a lot more work than I'd typically do at home. Yet one day, you stop and look back and think of the great stories you have to tell and the experiences that you've learned from and it all seems worth it. I'm not a believer that vacations change your life- they don't- but they do give you a little bit better perspective of the world around you and definitely help you build confidence by forcing yourself out of your comfort zone.