More, But Not Enough Keukenhof

Continuing our visit to Keukenhof...

Something about the Golden Age...

Go, Sentinel Spartans!

Today's wedding

In the orchid house

Love those blue orchids

And others

The exhibits are refreshed every few days as new flowers
arrive

Another gorgeous stream

Incredible place! Six weeks early every spring...

Tip-Toeing Through The Tulips At Keukenhof

So, channeling Tiny Tim as best I could without a ukelele or falsetto vocal range, I accompanied Ms. Vicki to Keukenhof, the annual Dutch extra-super-duper-extravaganza of tulips and other things floral, something on our bucket list for a long, long time. This is the earliest we have ever been in the Netherlands, and we finally made it to Keukenhof! Nor were we in the least disappointed. It is spectacularl! I lack the tongue to adequately describe (or even identify) all the tulips, astilbes, kalanchoes, rhododendra, orchids, azaleas, amaryllis, roses, daffodils, etc., so the pix will have to speak mostly for themselves. I took 240 photos, and somehow will reduce them to two long posts. This is most painful, even after a week or more.

Keukenhof is mostly about about flowers from bulbs, or "bulibs," as the Dutch say. They spell tulip tulp. Someone please explain this to me.

Keukenhof is many hundreds of acres, and approximately 87 gazillion bulbs,
each meticulously hand-planted, every year; it is mostly English-garden style,
on a vast scale, but with long boulevards, as above

Many beds are mixes; it's all about culture and history and aesthetics; but originally
and still mostly about the growers' struttin' their stuff

The many floral stream and creeks are especially wonderful

And, should you tire of the flowery stuff, there's plenty of sculpture and landscape
to look at

But how could you tire of the flowery stuff?

Streams emptying into a pond

Among many iconic shots of the "Garden of Europe"

Walking the concrete lily pads

Us, there

Not too many roses, but nice ones

Rhodos and azaleas all around, big borders and screens, some in bloom, but
most not...giving us hope that we are not too late for the Rhodo riots of Kent
and the south of England

Up closer

In one of the many, many indoor pavilions

Fruit trees everywhere exploding in bloom

Still working on the selfies

Is this iconic, or what?

Fields, from the windmill

To be continued...

SFO To AMS

After teary farewells, Jeremy got us to SFO, Alaskan got us to SEAttle, and Delta got us to AMSterdam. The flight on Delta was one of the best trans-Atlantics ever, Vicki getting a row to herself, me getting unlimited single malts and movies of choice. After immigration and customs and collecting luggage, Rene met us in Le Duc, everything ship-shape and Bristol-fashion, and, after the usual payment and paperwork, we settled in at Amsterdamse Bos campground in Amstelveen, where the usually gruff owner remembered us as if we were old friends. We stayed up as late as we could, unpacking, re-acquainting ourselves with Le Duc, and then crashed.

Vicki has gotten very good and very consistent at the 50 lb 
limit; each one of our checked bags weighed 50.4 lbs

So, yeah, Alaskan (right) got us to Seattle (middle left) and Delta
(left) got us to Amsterdam

Mt. Rainier detail

The route took us over coastal ranges 

Thus, closer

And a confluence of great rivers...and then the Rockies, and
then over cloudy central Canada, Hudson Bay, Greenland,
and then the North Sea...Vicki sleeping, me watching TBL
for the 111th time (always some new gem) then The Big Short,
then bits of Concussion

And then, on final, the tulip fields and warehouses south of
Haarlem

Thus

Low country

As an old windmill greets us just before touchdown