18 April 2009
Today Betsy, Michelle, and I took a day trip up to Keukenhof to see the garden when the tulilps were actually blooming. We planned to leave the guesthouse at 6:45 am so that we could spend as much time as possible up there because we also wanted to go to the Hague and Delft. I was running a few minutes late, so we didn’t really leave until 10 ‘til, but then I realized I had forgotten my wallet. So we ended up being on the road around 7 am. It worked out fine. We didn’t miss our train or anything.
We got into Leiden Centraal where we were catching the bus to Keukenhof. There were SO many people! The line was really long. We had to watch two busses come and go before we got on the third one. That was nothing compared to how many people were actually at the garden. It was incredible. When Mama and I went in late March, she took a picture of me at the top of the windmill and there was maybe one other person up there. When we saw the windmill, it was completely full of people at the top. No one could move freely up there. It was nuts!
But the tulips! My goodness!!! They are unbelievable. The garden is so beautiful with the tulips in bloom that it’s almost hard to believe. Michelle was saying that she didn’t want to look at them too much because it would almost make them less amazing. I didn’t really feel that way, but I can see where she was coming from. They’re so unbelievable at first, but then they’re everywhere for the couple of hours one is walking around in there and you start to think that they’re normal. I love it in there. I would have loved to just stretch out on some grass and read all day, relaxing in the sun. It’s an amazing place.
There are so many different kinds of tulips, too. There are HUGE ones and tiny ones. A million different colors, ones with pointy tops, ones with the rounded tops, and ones with tops that look all ragged like that paper that you get wet and then tear off at the wet edges. It’s amazing to think how many types there are out there.
When we left the garden around 2pm, we decided to skip the Hague because we thought that the museum with “The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” would probably be closed by the time we got there anyway. So we went straight to Delft because we all wanted to see if we could get some Delftware for our relatives at home.
Delft is such a cute city! It reminded me a lot of Amsterdam with the way the city was set up. There were canals and everything too. Delft’s canals were gross looking and didn’t smell amazing, though, so I don’t imagine they get cleaned out once a week like the ones in Amsterdam do. But Delft is incredibly charming. I really liked it. We walked around and tried to find the Delftware factories (all of which were closed) but we did find a few shops that were open still selling it. We each got something, but it is SO expensive. I figured it would be, but it was hard to see it on a pricetag.
After we found our souvenirs, we went to dinner at a place called Billy Beers (Dutch for bear I guess) that is a chain. Each Beer restaurant has a different bear as its name, and they’re all over the Netherlands. The food was really good and really reasonably priced, which was awesome. For 10 euro we got a big chunk of meat and two sides. It was like the US! Hahah…
After dinner, we made it back to Maastricht around 11pm, exhausted and ready for bed.
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