Tulips in the Netherlands

Late last year I started mapping out our travel plans for 2025. I asked Chris for the places he most wanted to see (Rome, Normandy for Memorial Day, and fjords in Norway) and then I filled in some of the things I wanted to see and do, and we ended up with a pretty full calendar of trips planned out before we even rang in the New Year. But in all that planning, scheduling, and plotting, I forgot about tulip season in the Netherlands, which is shocking because most of the places we want to visit are focused on cool or pretty sites that I want to see with my own eyes, and candy-colored fields of tulips fit that bill perfectly. (Museums and old churches are cool and all… but they are almost never the reason we choose a place to visit.)

Luckily for us, tulip fields are also a huge must-do for most of our coworkers, and when I showed my list of trips to a friend from work she saw the gaping hole in April and started telling me about how amazing the tulips are and gave me a bunch of recommendations for planning everything out. A few quick google sessions later and I had us booked for a couple of days in late April.

The trip to the Netherlands was also the first trip since Rome, since we had to cancel Lisbon when Minnie got sick. She was much better by early March when I was scheduling the trip, but we were still worried about her, so we decided to bring her with us on the drive. Traveling with both our dogs is stressful and annoying because Ghost has zero chill and when they are together they work each other up into so much of a frenzy that it turns into a full time job wrestling them when they are in strange situation. But traveling with just Minnie is much, much easier — in fact, the only real issue with Minnie is making sure she doesn’t see other dogs since she will growl and bark at them, but even when that happens it’s easy to keep a hold of her and calm her back down again. Plus, it’s even easier to just cover her eyes when we see dogs, since she only reacts to seeing them. (They can be 2 feet away and barking wildly… but if she doesn’t see them she doesn’t even notice the barking.) Other than that she just hangs out quietly with us and is happy to ride in the car, hang out in a restaurant, and even occasionally sit still while I take photos of her in scenic locations.

My coworker had given us a couple of recommendations for towns to stay in near the big flower gardens (Keukenhof), but when I was looking at the options I noticed several other options near the Atlantic Ocean. A few clicks on reviews later, and we were booked at the Van Der Valk Palace Hotel in Noordwijk, just a couple of blocks from the beach. It was pretty amazing when we arrived because I was immediately slapped in the face with the cool, salty, ocean air and it hit me in all the home sick places I wasn’t even really aware I had.

It also turned out to be King’s Day in the Netherlands, which wasn’t even a holiday I knew about. What it translated to at the beach was hundreds of Dutch people wearing bright orange, partying and drinking while crammed into a cordoned off area near the restaurants lining the road that went around the beach area. There was live music and a small area with rides for the kids and a narrow walkway left between the party zone and a wall across from the restaurants that we navigated with Minnie to get to the ocean. Luckily, despite the crowds that had clearly been drinking for hours, everyone was still relaxed and having fun.

The next day we decided to keep things simple and drive to the Tulpen route, which is just an area in the Netherlands where there are a lot of tulip fields that you can park next to take photos. It was a bit of a drive, but we packed the car up with the things we wanted and brought Minnie along for the adventure. When I booked the trip I had done some quick research to figure out good dates for tulip season, and thought we were mid-season. However, we quickly realized as we drove along the Tulpen route with field after field of brown dirt that we were actually at the end of the season. Luckily there were still a few fields around with tulips, so we were able to stop and get some pictures and admire the flowers.

After several hours of driving around trying to find fields and a lunch break, we finally called it a day and went back to the hotel. We didn’t see all the flowers we would have liked, but it was still a really nice day. When we got back to the hotel we also realized just how swank our hotel was since a car club of classic Rolls Royce and Bentley enthusiasts were hanging out blocking the parking garage. When I finally was able to enter the garage I got to watch someone very, very carefully pulling a huge, classic Bentley out of a tiny parking spot.

For our second day we had early entry tickets to Keukenhof flower gardens, which is generally considered a must-see for tulips. It was also dog friendly, which was awesome since we could bring Minnie with us rather than leaving her in the hotel. The gardens were amazing — huge beds of gorgeous flowers and carefully curated plants and garden paths to wander around and enjoy. We knew the gardens were very popular, which is why we booked tickets for a Monday right when they opened, but by 11:00 the crowds were getting ridiculous and you could see more large tour groups entering all the time. Plus, with that many people there were more dogs around, which meant Minnie was more obnoxious — so we decided it was time for us to go.

We didn’t really have afternoon plans, so we wandered around the town near our hotel and hung out on the hotel patio for a bit before grabbing dinner at the hotel restaurant. Overall it was a great trip and we got to see most of what we wanted to see. The one thing we missed was classic windmills — we saw hundreds and hundreds of modern windmills through the country, but the only classic one was covered with tourists at Keukenhof. Since it was such a nice trip and the drive wasn’t bad, we’re planning to return next year a little earlier in the season to see more tulip fields, and to book some attractions that feature classic windmills. I think we might also skip Keukenhof next year —

It was beautiful, but the crowds weren’t really our thing.

Life threw several monkey wrenches into the rest of our summer travel plan. Upcoming Summer Trips:

• Normandy/Mont Saint Michel, France

• Boleslawiec, Poland (Polish pottery)/Devil’s Bridge (cancelled car trouble)

• Dunkirk/Calais, France (shortened, Ghost sick)

• Berlin/Copenhagen (Mel)

• Bergen, Norway (cancelled)