Tulips, Tulips, Tulips
It all came down to Monday. This was the day that sparked the idea for our entire trip to Europe. Absolutely no pressure, but everything before and after this were just icing on the cake.
Countess Jacoba van Beieren (Jacqueline of Bavaria) (1401-1436) used Keukenduyn (kitchen dunes) as hunting grounds for the kitchen of Teylingen Castle. Keukenhof Castle was built in 1641 and the estate grew to encompass an area of over 200 hectares.
In 1949 a group of 20 leading flower bulb growers and exporters came up with the plan to use the estate to exhibit spring-flowering bulbs, signaling the birth of Keukenhof as a spring park. The park opened its gates to the public in 1950 and was an instant success.
Last year was the 75th edition of Keukenhof.
Keukenhof is now one of the world’s largest flower gardens.
With some 7 million flower bulbs planted in the garden annually, it’s one jaw-dropping view after another as you wander around the 80-acre wonder-scape.
Between us we took nearly 400 images, so we’ll do our darnedest to only show the best of the best.
It’s not just the flowers: the lawns, bushes, and trees were beautifully planted and meticulously maintained.
The large pond is well over 150 years old and is the oldest extant part of Keukenhof.
What you can’t appreciate from the photos are the birds singing in the treetops—they really lend a celestial air to the experience.
Maybe not tulips, but Amanda couldn’t resist getting a picture with her favorite: hydrangeas.
Just outside the gates of Keukenhof, we rented bikes to visit two other sites in the Bollenstreek—Holland’s Bulb Region.
We first rode 2.6 miles to The Tulip Barn. Once Holland became a destination for tourists wanting to see endless fields filled with tulips, the farmers began finding their flowers trampled by careless visitors looking for photographs amongst the flowers. Several spots such as this now offer tourists the opportunity to walk through fields of tulips while protecting farmers’ crops.
Our sentiments exactly!
We finally got our chance to “tip toe through the tulips.” 🥰
We barely made it out the gate from The Tulip Barn when we rode past a field filled with hyacinths and Amanda just had to stop—such as fragrant flower.
We next rode 3.1 miles to Tulip Experience Amsterdam. After walking all morning and biking nearly 6 miles, it was time for some sustenance at their café called de witte zwaan (the white swan)—not a bad view, eh?
Never seen this before. I thought I might not appreciate the culinary blend on my sandwich, but I wound up really enjoying the curry ketchup.
More than just tulips to traipse through, Tulip Experience Amsterdam included a museum that, among other things, traced the history of tulips from c. 1000 where they grew wild as tiny flowers in Kazakhstan, on the slopes along the borders of China and Tibet with Russia and Afghanistan. Traders following the ancient Silk Road, took the bulbs and seeds to Persia (Iran) and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey).
Tulips were first cultivated in Persia around 1050. The Persian capital Isfahan (Iran) and Baghdad (Iraq) were home to beautiful gardens where tulips bloomed. The red wild tulip is still a Persian symbol of eternal love.
In the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), tulips were regarded as a sacred symbol representing protection. Faithful Muslims treated the tulip as a relic and wore the flowers in their tulip-shaped turbans as a sign of their status. This gave the flower its name—tulipan means turban! For two centuries, Turkey managed to keep the tulip exclusively to itself and this is also where the first form of “tulip mania” arose. New varieties were bred from wild tulips and there was a heavy penalty for stealing tulip bulbs.
The first tulips arrived in Southern Netherlands (now Flanders) in 1562. The first nurseries emerged near Haarlem’s city center by 1646, making it the birthplace of a flourishing Dutch flower bulb industry. At the beginning of the 18th century, flower bulb cultivation slowly moved south and the first contours of today's bulb-growing region emerged. This Flower Bulb Region (Bollenstreek) held the perfect conditions for growing tulips, and this is how prolific flower bulb cultivation in the Netherlands began.
Around 1870, the first bulb-growing operations began replacing cattle farming, and by 1885, the tulip emerged as the most cultivated bulbous plant in the Netherlands. Before that, it was the hyacinth and the daffodil, but with the emergence of the Darwin tulips (strong growers with a lot of potential), the popularity of growing tulips increased enormously.
The end of German occupation after WWII led to an increase in leisure time for many Dutch people and domestic tourism grew. The first flower parade took place in 1947 and the Keukenhof flower park opened its doors in 1950. As a result, flower bulb tourism took off in the Bollenstreek.
Enough learning…
Roll that beautiful tulip footage.
You know it!
From Tulip Experience Amsterdam we rode to S. Pennings & zn. This ended up being a mistake, but the uptick was that the route back to Keukenhof then took us along the Steengracht Canal. As Amanda will tell you, this was her favorite part of our 9.5 mile loop—and that’s saying something given how beautiful parts of our earlier journey were.
To ensure we could rent bicycles before the afternoon rush, we left Keukenhof around 10:30. After visiting The Tulip Barn and Tulip Experience Amsterdam, we turned in our bikes and returned to the park to see a few sections we had missed.
What a difference a few hours makes. Our peaceful oasis from the morning had been fully overrun with people in the afternoon. The crowds mostly seemed to swarm near the entrance, so it was less congested further inside the park.
In the end, we saw it all. This was truly the experience we had hoped for—expectations exceeded!
After walking nearly 7 miles and biking nearly 10, we were finally all tuliped out and ready for the bus back to Haarlem. During the ride, Amanda played her game Strands. The spanogram was Spring Flowers and included tulip, hyacinth, and daffodil. Now, how is that for a wonderful coincidence?!
