Away from the gray...to flowers on Parade

It has been soooo gloomy in Brussels lately. We've had some short bursts of sunshine most days, but really it feels like it's been raining for like a month straight. Yesterday though despite the gloom (and even though the weather report was calling for mid 50s and rain in Holland) we decided to pile in the car and head for the flower parade. My sister Erin and her husband Andy were safely in Madrid so we had the day free so off we went. We got a bit of a late start and somehow the 2 hour trip took 3 and 1/2 hours, but by the time we arrived in a small town just down the road from Keukenhof our luck started to change. We managed to drive right on to the parade route (minutes before they closed off the street) to find an ideal parking spot right on the route 10 minutes before the parade started. And the clouds parted and the sun came out...it actually even felt somewhat warm. The 45 minute parade was a lot of fun! There were marching bands (Autumn especially loved those) and tons of beautiful flowers...they smelled fabulous too.

It was fun seeing all the locals watching the parade
out the windows of their adorable little houses.

And all the beautiful flower floats

I think this VW van was my favorite

Autumn's favorite was definitely the marching bands.  

After one would pass she would say "more, more"

It turned out to be such a great day and I'm so glad we made the trip!  Click here to view the full album of our trip.

We weren't done yet though...after the parade we make a quick detour to visit the cute little coastal town of Noordwijk.  On the way there we found our tulip fields and got some family shots of us in the tulips :o)

Then in Noordwijk we found a souvenir shop that had the wooden shoes for Autumn that I didn't get a chance to buy on our last trip up.  Yeah!

We took in the lovely beach for a bit and then piled back in the car for our trip home.  Luckily it was much shorter than our trip out although the clouds came back and it poured most of the way, but it was a great day soaking up lovely Holland and some sunshine!