This is titled with a 1 as this is the first of at least three and possibly four visits to these famous gardens for us.
In 1857 the owners of Castle Keukenhof asked a father son team of landscape architects to restructure the park and grounds around the castle in the English style which has been maintained to the present day. In 1949 a consortium of bulb growers and flower exporters decided to showcase their products at Keukenhof Gardens and thus support the export industry. This year is the 75th anniversary of that opening. The number of visitors has increased from 200,000 to over 1.5 million per year during its eight week season. The garden is open for the spring growing season from March 21 – May 12 this year. The garden is open for events the rest of the year. Each Autumn over 40 gardners plant over 7 million bulbs which are donated to the garden by over 100 different growers.
Before we get to the flowers at Keukenhof we had an hour walk to catch the bus to the gardens. These are the first tulips we have seen in Amsterdam.On our walk we passed this; exciting news for us. Miznon is opening a restaurant in Amsterdam, hopefully before we leave. We ate at our first Miznon in Paris with Audrey and Neil. Since then we have eaten many times at the one in Paris and three different outlets in Tel Aviv. We celebrated Jim’s 70th birthday at Miznon in Melbourne and have been by the one in NYC.This mural is outside Sandy’s favorite grocery store, Lidl. The Lidl in Amsterdam is too far away for us to shop there regularly. How many of the celebrities on the mural can you recognize?This is the Albert Cuyp market which we go to quite often and have written about previously.Entrance to the Market.We found these wonderful Pastel de Natas just around the corner from the market. Our favorite Portuguese pastry.On our way to catch our timed bus for Keukenhof we Strolled down our namesake street Jan Steenstraat. Tweede means second.The other end of the street, eerste meaning first.After our hour long delightful walk and a 30 minute bus ride we finally arrived at Keukenhof. We were so grateful it did not rain and we had clouds and sun. 60 degrees and windy, as usual.
It really is flower overload. We spent three hours here, about 30 minutes of which was having coffee. In spite of that, we do look forward to returning and seeing the changes with our other guests as the flowers bloom in three different flowering periods, each offering something special.
These are all the pictures that we took in the three hours, 150, most of which we did not post here.
Incredible colors. We have Tulip farms in Oregon ans Washington States. This garden is a paek. Stunning. Looks spectacularly beautiful. Thank you Kathleen
What an amazing display of floral beauty. Tulips, Amaryllis, Orchids, Composite and so much more all creatively arranged in a lovely setting. Thank you for sharing the beauty.
Such lovely gardens. I was fortunate to visit there during a trip to Amsterdam more the 30 years ago. Loved my time in Amsterdam and hope to return one day. Thank you for sharing your travels. Always looking forward to your blogs.
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