Saturday the 29th was the last day of our trip. We had tickets for a trip to Keukenhof in the afternoon, so we decided to use the morning to walk through the canal district and see what we found there.
We took the tram down to the canals, and got off in front of the Rijksmuseum. This is one of the oldest museums in Amsterdam, and it has a beautiful old building (sort of like the train station!). Inside is an art museum, which content appealed to a minority of our group, so we decided to tour its garden. The garden is beautiful, and includes a life-size chess board.
From the museum we continued walking north, through the concentric rings of canals. It was an upscale shopping district, but we are early risers and the shops weren’t due to open for a while. The shop windows were interesting, and the canals were beautiful, and we thoroughly enjoyed our walk.
When we reached the meeting point for the Keukenhof tour, we still had time for lunch, so we stopped in at a place called the “New York Film School Cafe.” We liked most of what we ate, but the look of the place was unique, to say the least. (See photo, below.) Then we boarded the bus for Keukenhof and headed out of town. When I saw the freeway signs I was glad I wasn’t driving!
Keukenhof was much better than expected! I thought it would be something like our lilac festivals in Oregon, or the tulip festivals up in Washington – where you see these vast fields of color. They’re beautiful, but they’re nothing on Keukenhof.
Keukenhof is a garden, not fields of flowers. It’s a huge (79 acres!) park with walkways, grass, water, bridges, trees, swans, and zillions of people there to see even more zillions of flowers that have been beautifully arranged in garden plots to dazzle your eyes. They also have several buildings where even more flowers are on display, along with necessities like food and restrooms.
We stayed there for nearly four hours, by which time we were tired and ready for the bus. Each of us had taken well over 100 pictures. It’s one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen. It was a great ending for our trip!
