A Touristy Dutch Weekend

We had recently been asked by several people if we had been to Keukenhof yet. At that point, we had no idea what they were talking about but when we did our research we discovered that Keukenhof was a beautiful garden surrounded by the famous Dutch tulip fields. For more info check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keukenhof. The issue with Keukenhof is that it is only open for approximately 2 months and we had missed the first month. Originally we thought we would go Easter weekend because Gearoid has a long weekend but the same people who asked if we had been, highly recommended we avoid it on Easter weekend due to the amount of foreign tourists (mostly Germans) who would be there. Scared we would miss this beautiful garden we booked a car for the following weekend and decided to check out Keukenhof. Having a car for the weekend also led us to other Dutch sites and overall with the beautiful weather we had a great time.

Unfortunately, the pictures don’t capture the amazing beauty and wonderful smell of Keukenhof. Flowers I have never even imagined- feathered tulips, flowers with a checkerboard design, 3 foot high tulips, etc- were there on display. Gearoid was heavily influenced by the amount of other tourists playing photographer and captured everything he could- including the field of dandelions at the entrance. We thought it was pretty busy when we arrived at 9:30 but we were wrong. Two hours later we could not move without touching people. We happened to visit the gardens the day of the annual Flower parade. We had had our share of flowers and people by then and squeezed out to our rented car. After a quick picnic in the parking lot, we drove around the fields surrounding Keukenhof and I took quick pictures of the colorful flower fields. The color was amazing and the fields looked like giant striped carpets with orange, yellow, purple, pink, red, and white.

 After the flowers we headed to Haarlam, a gorgeous city which we plan to revisit in the future and explore more thoroughly. We generally just walked around and took more pictures. Afterwards, we sat at a café by a canal and planned the next adventure of the day.

After Haarlam, we drove less than 20 minutes and ended up at the beach. Along the beach, people were already setting up their “summer homes.” A long stretch of the beach was filled with almost uniform white rectangles that we’re assuming people use and live in on the weekends. The boardwalk and beachfront weren’t very attractive but the beach is the beach and I will definitely be returning. Across the street from the beach were dunes that are part of Kennemer National Park which you can hike through. After walking along the “commercial” part of the beach we returned to our car and then drove to the official entrance of Kennemer National Park and sat on a part of the beach unoccupied by summer rectangles.   It was a nice ending to a busy day.

 On Sunday, Gearoid had a soccer match and I had to run for my marathon training so we didn’t leave until early afternoon. Sunday’s destination was Kinderdijk, a world heritage site with 19 windmills built around 1740. We had a nice walk down a path that let you enjoy and take tons of pictures of the windmills. There’s really not much to say except the weather was beautiful and the windmills were plentiful. Afterwards, we had an early dinner in a little town that’s name cracks us up: Nieuw Lekkerland. “Lekker” is a word commonly used to describe something as delicious or really good.  We have heard it on a ton of commercials and I use it all the time (mostly incorrectly) in Dutch class when I don’t know what else to say. Anyway, dinner was lekker(!) in Nieuw Lekkerland.

 Over dinner we decided to extend our adventurous weekend and visit the town of Gouda- which is famous for the cheese and is pronounced as how-da. The perfect word to describe Gouda is charming. There were tiny bridges over the canals, a huge cathedral, the cheese weigh house, and of course cheese shops. Unfortunately, because we arrived late on a Sunday all we were able to do was walk around the town and take pictures.  Trust me though- I will be returning when the cheese shops are open. Gouda is also famous for my favorite treat here- stroopwafels – but I will be blogging about these delicacies at a later date. Overall, we had a beautiful weekend and although it was touristy- Dutch people in my running club told me that mainly foreigners visit these places- we were glad to have enjoyed these experiences.  Living here for the next two years has made us determined to visit as many places as possible- even if we have to fight tour buses to get in. Gearoid and I Iived 3 hours from Niagara Falls and didn’t visit them until we had moved away and were in the area visiting friends.  We don’t want to make that mistake again.  After all,  flights to Europe are pretty expensive.