Flowers, flowers, everywhere...

We headed to The Netherlands this weekend to visit Lisse and the famous Keukenhof gardens. As soon as I learned we were moving to Brussels and started doing some research, one of the first things I knew we just had to do this spring was head to Keukenhof for the famous tulips. Here is the blog post that inspired me...you can see why this was on my travel "to do" list I'm sure :o)

We had planned to go the weekend of the flower parade just as they did in the post, but when we found out our friends Liz & Matt and their cute daughters Grace & Audrey were going over Easter weekend we thought we'd tag along for the fun! Keukenhof is only a little over two hours from here and a relatively easy drive so we headed out early Friday morning and we're in Lisse by lunch.

And as soon as we neared the park the flower fields sprung to life! Here is a picture of some beautiful purple hyacinth...

I was excited and ready to see more! Once we got in the park we found our first of several pairs of wooden shoes for our two cute models to try out :o)

After a quick bite to eat we set out to explore the park. There were flowers everywhere and the tulips that were blooming were quite amazing. Unfortunately I think we were a few weeks early for the full tulip display in all it's glory, but we truly enjoyed the flowers that were there. And a greenhouse in the center of the park had tons of different varieties of tulips...more than I even knew existed...some that were taller than Autumn was! I tried to get a picture with her next to the crazy tall ones, but she wasn't in the mood :o( We wandered around for a few hours enjoying all the park had to offer (including a playground and petting zoo) until we all decided we were tired, cold, and ready to head to Haarlem and our hotel. Here are some more pictures of the park...totally unedited...can you believe the color of some of these flowers...it was striking!

Click here to view the full Keukenhoff album.

The flowers were a great beginning to our first spring here in Europe and left me craving more! So much so that if the weather is good in a few weeks we just might head back to see the flower parade and some more tulip fields :o) Maybe we'll even bike through the fields as I had originally planned. Come on sunshine and warm weather! :o)

More to come on the rest of our 4 day weekend in the Netherlands...next up Haarlem, Amdsterdam, and Delft. Stay tuned...