Spring in the Netherlands - tulip madness

Everyone has ever seen photos of blooming tulip fields from Holland. A riot of colored stripes all the way to the horizon. But it always seemed to me that they had planted one or two fields for photos and that was it... There are no more blooming fields. However, ordinary tourists have too many photos with blooming fields, which means there are these fields somewhere...

And in autumn, we checked when tulips bloom and when the famous Keukenhof flower park is open - in spring, from mid-March to mid-May. And of course the best time is the middle of April. and then there were cheap tickets just for three days (a long weekend due to Easter) and we decided to go. 

Time X was approaching and it was necessary to plan a trip. It was decided to make a small circle almost all over little Holland - Eindhoven (the airport where we arrived) - Amsterdam - Keukenhof - Delft - Eindhoven. The simplest price review showed that it will not be cheap to travel around Holland by public transport and in order not to waste time and money, we decided to rent a car, the funniest thing is that skyscanner turned out to be one of the best aggregators of car rental with good prices! Yes, it is the one through which we are looking for tickets for flights. You can also look for rental cars from them.

So where we are going is clear, what we are driving is also clear, but where to live is not. Amsterdam is not a cheap city, and if you are going to Amsterdam on holidays, weekends, the tulip blossom period, gayparade or some other event, then you either need to book a hotel six months in advance or be prepared for unrealistic prices. For our dates, one night cost from 200 euros... Couchsurfing is a good way to find free accommodation and meet interesting people, but it feels like it doesn't work in Amsterdam or works in some way that we didn't understand. In general, in Delft, we quickly found a host with a great girl Martha, but Amsterdam and the surrounding area remained deaf to our searches. And it was decided, come what may, we will figure it out on the spot, but we decided to take sleeping bags just in case.

There was only a week left before the trip, and suddenly, somehow unexpectedly, a link turned up that just on the day of our arrival, the Tulip route 2017 - Tulip Road 2017 begins to work. And it is located near Amsterdam. It's decided - we need to stop by.

Early flight to Eindhoven from Katowice. And already at 9 a.m. we are in Holland. Car rental is very close to the airport. We take our mini car, it turns out to be a peugeot 108. How small it is after the Opel station wagon...

And now we are already "flying" along the highway in the direction of the small village of Emeloord. It is there that the 100-kilometer tulip road begins, which opened just on the day of our arrival.

Just a couple of hours and we are already on the other side of the country, and here is the first field of tulips... It's still small and only a couple of species, but even it's amazing and we pop out to take photos.

And then there were the fields... and yet, everything is so colorful and beautiful and this is not a park or a special place for tourists, but just farm fields of tulips.

Sometimes there are exhibitions and sales - small plots, each meter by meter, planted with different types of tulips. There are all sorts of things here, if it weren't for the leaves, I would never have thought they were tulips...

But fields are fields, and Amsterdam is waiting. I still want to see it without such a crowd of tourists as there was at the gay pride parade - An unexpected gay pride parade in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is only a 40-50 minute drive away. We leave the car in the Park & Ride parking lot. There are such in many tourist cities, the rules are slightly different, but the main point remains the same - to enable people to park their cars inexpensively and get to the center by public transport and thus reduce the number of cars in the city center. In the Amsterdam version, parking for 24 hours costs only 1 euro plus 5 euros for travel to the center and back for two. By the way, the main thing in Amsterdam is not to forget that you have to go from the parking lot to the center and return from the central area too, to do this, you need to make a check-in ticket on public transport, otherwise the discounted fare will not work and you will have to pay quite a lot of money for parking. Although we used Park & Ride for the first time, but we succeeded. We advise you to try it, especially since it is much cheaper and more convenient than looking for parking in the city center.

I don't want to list the sights of Amsterdam at all, especially since there are enough descriptions of them on the Internet anyway. We decided to go for an hour-long walk along the canals of Amsterdam.

Then we tasted not quite local food in an Argentine eatery and just walked around the evening city, of course, not forgetting to turn into the Red Light district.

We have not yet managed to unravel the secret of cheap housing in Amsterdam - every time we go to Amsterdam, prices bite and even very much, because the first time it turned out to be a gay pride parade, and now Easter holidays. As a result, the cost of a bed in a hostel started from 100 euros, and rooms for two from 230 euros, and even airbnb did not help here, although it usually works fine. How do we usually look for accommodation when traveling - How do we look for accommodation when traveling? And how to live inexpensively?

And we decided that since we have a car, we'll just spend the night in it. As a result, we drove 20 kilometers south of Amsterdam and stood on one of the many (on European roads) vacation spots. Having reclined the seat and covered ourselves with sleeping bags, we managed to survive the night quite tolerably. Although the tall Pasha was not so comfortable in a small car. So spending the night in the car is still an extreme case.

And the next morning we went to the world famous Keukenhof Park. This park is open only a couple of months a year - usually from mid-March to mid-May - during the flowering period of tulips. Up-to-date information can always be viewed on the official website keukenhof.nl In 2017, the entrance ticket costs 16 euros per adult, and it is also possible to buy a combi ticket with passage from Amsterdam.

We spent 6 or 7 hours in the park. There is a lot to see here, a variety of flower beds and installations of flowers.

Various flower pavilions - in mid-April 2017, these were pavilions of tulips, orchids and roses.

And it's just that the park is very pleasant and it's worth taking a walk slowly. Climb on the observation decks, watch the animals in the mini zoo, sit in a cafe...

Another 1-1.5 hours and we are already in Delft, a small old town. Here we took advantage of couchsurfing and stopped at the native Dutch Martha. Thanks to her, we looked at how many Dutch people live and what life looks like, where the house is divided between neighbors and there are common areas such as a toilet and a kitchen. In principle, everything is almost like in family dormitories, only neater and more beautiful. But it was very unusual to see such a housing option in western Europe.

Delft itself is a very nice town with a couple of attractions, at least for small connoisseurs of history. And from my point of view, one day or evening is enough for it, although maybe I'm wrong and we just didn't feel the atmosphere of the city.

And then there was the passage through Rotterdam, where we could not find free parking along our way and walk at least a little, although we still circled the city, drove over the Erasmus Bridge and under the cubic houses. Rotterdam looked like an interesting city and we even thought it was worth going back and looking at it in more detail :)

The car was delivered at the airport without any questions - quickly and comfortably. By the way, in the evening we received a letter that everything was "OK" and the deposit money was returned to the account in full. Meanwhile, the plane took us to Poland in some 1.5-2 hours. That's how our weekend in Holland went. And if you have already seen the flowering of tulips in Holland, write in the comments whether it made an impression on you, and of course, if you have any questions, ask!