Our first full day in Amsterdam technically started earlier in the week. Business busy-ness and being completely out of practice when it came to travelling meant that holiday planning took a backseat, and I didn’t get around to checking what was available until Monday (we travelled on Friday). The weather on Saturday looked perfect: an ideal day for visiting the tulip garden of Keukenhof. Not only that, but the Bloemencorso Bollenstreek—flower parade—was being held that day as well. Since tulips were the bucket list item that inspired my parents’ trip, I thought it would make sense to go.
The only problem is that everyone else had the same idea. Tour after tour was already booked. The website for the garden itself said they were sold out. I’m not sure what combination of words I eventually entered into Google that allowed me to book four tickets for the first bus of the day, but I grabbed the tickets and hit purchase. It felt like mission accomplished.
Except, on the day itself, we then needed to get from our hotel to This is Holland, the launch point for the dozens (hundreds?) of coaches that transport visitors to the garden. Because the tickets were so early and the city’s buses don’t start running until later during the weekend, we actually had to hop in a taxi, arriving back at Amsterdam Centraal just before 6:30 am.
From there, we caught the free ferry that runs across the IJ (pronounced “eye”), the body of water that separates south Amsterdam from the north. The ferry runs approximately every 5 minutes, and riding it is an experience in itself: bicycles, motorbikes, and pedestrians pile onboard one end and walk through to the other when it lands on the other side.
We pootled along the waterfront to the This is Holland building, and MrElaineous and I managed to secure a spot near the front of the queue while my parents explored the area. As time ticked by, the line grew longer and longer until hundreds (thousands?) of people were not-so-patiently waiting to enter. It felt disorganised from the outside, but once the doors opened, the staff were completely professional and funnelled everyone to their correct coach.
At just past 7:30 am, we were on our way to Keukenhof. The music playing through the speakers varied between oompa band and Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecilia sung in Dutch, which added to the surrealness of watching the landscape fly by in the early morning light.
We arrived not long after opening, but the garden was already heaving with people. Clearly everyone else had also received the memo that it was going to be a lovely day. Thankfully we were able to walk right in since we had tickets, and I wholeheartedly recommend booking in advance if you’re planning your own visit to Keukenhof, rather than chance it on the day.
And it’s here that words fail me. (Don’t worry, I found them again; this post has 2,000 of them).
Keukenhof advertises itself as “the most beautiful spring garden in the world”, and this isn’t mere marketing or exaggeration. The sights are simply stunning.
Tulips of every size, shape, and colour are the stars of the show, and they can be found throughout the garden planted in different shapes, as mosaics, or as solid blocks of colour. A river of daffodils spills through the trees in one section. Hyacinth, muscari, and lilacs add even more texture to an already overwhelming tapestry of spring in bloom.
Before I get completely carried away by the beauty of the garden, the history of the tulip and how it became inexorably tied to the Netherlands is worth a look as well. The flower has its origins in the mountainous regions of Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan. From there, tulips began to be cultivated in the gardens of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the word “tulip” derives from the Turkish word for turban (tülbend), which in turn originated from the Persian word dulband. All of this is to say that what is now considered a symbol of the Netherlands itself started half a world away.
The plant slowly worked its way west, carried by those who fell under the spell of the tulips’ beauty and rarity. Proto-botanist Carolus Clusius studied the flower and helped spread it throughout the aristocratic gardens of Europe in the 16th century, both intentionally by giving bulbs to friends and accidentally: plant thieves were known to raid his patch at Leiden University. However, it was in the 17th century when tulips really took off, during a period that is known as Tulipmania.
At this point, our story intersects with the history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), one of the most powerful companies in the world. Its trade in spices, silks, and other goods from Asia made the Dutch Republic incredibly wealthy. And where there is wealth, there are those who want to show their status … and those who want to make even more money. Believe it or not, tulips fit the bill perfectly in both cases.
Remember Carolus Clusius? One of his interests was trying to understand “broken” tulips. These are rare tulips that appear with broken stripes on the petals. He wasn’t able to crack the code during his lifetime, but today we know that this pattern is caused by a virus. Due to the rarity of these types of flowers, a market developed for tulip bulbs that saw eye-watering sums of money exchange hands. The most well-known example was a single bulb that was traded for the same price as a house.
The Dutch had invented the economic bubble. And, like all bubbles, it eventually burst.
That didn’t stop the Dutch love affair with the tulip, though. Today, the Netherlands is the leading producer of both cut tulips and tulip bulbs, with the flower practically serving as a national emblem. Indeed, the Netherlands’ focus on floriculture has boosted its economy in the 20th and 21st centuries: it’s an export that now brings in billions of euros each year.
But back to Keukenhof. Beyond the tulips planted outside in the 79-acre site, there were also indoor exhibitions that included from dozens of varieties of daffodil in shades ranging from white and pale yellow to nearly orange. However, the main indoor attraction has to be a collection of hundreds of tulip hybrids, all neatly labelled so you could easily pick out your favourite. I thought roses had cornered the market on weird and random names, but the tulips gave them a run for their money, from Ice Cream and Hotpants to royalty-inspired Orange Princess and Queen of the Night. Someone clearly understood marketing as well, giving this tulip the name of World’s Favourite.
This was mind-blowing on a few levels. I hadn’t realised how many hybrids there were, and how much they all varied. Colour is the most obvious difference, but the size and shape of the flower itself could range from small and compact to big and blousy, more like a peony than a tulip. The texture could be jagged or ruffled. Tulips are no longer the rounded turbans of the Ottoman Empire but have been turned into a flower of a thousand shapes.
I’ve spent a lot of time describing the appearance of the garden, but what about the smell? I’m afraid I’m the wrong person to ask.
I had various problems with my sinuses as a child, and I suspect this did something to damage my olfactory bulbs. In other words, my sense of smell has never been particularly good. I could appreciate a lovely candle or scented body lotion, but there was no chance of me being able to detect individual notes of odour. I had Covid for the first and—touch wood—only time in December 2023. I lost my sense of smell and taste several days after I started getting sick; although my sense of taste has partially recovered since then, my sense of smell is more or less MIA.
Meanwhile, my mother has the nose of a bloodhound.
Every few minutes she would ask, “Are you sure you can’t smell that?” The answer was always no. Apparently Keukenhof smells divine, as you would expect of millions upon millions of blooming flowers, but I will have to rely on her word for it.
Smell aside, I am convinced that we can bring about world peace if only we could cover the planet with flowers. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a happier place. People of all nationalities descend on Keukenhof with a smile on their faces to photograph the blooms. The crowds and queues didn’t seem to make anyone cranky, and some even went to extremes, like the content producer we met from Kazakhstan who dressed as a tulip. She wanted to make sure we knew that tulips came from her country, and it’s now something I will not forget.
Yet no one needs a tulip or a daffodil or a hyacinth. Abraham Maslow formulated his famous hierarchy of needs in 1943, and it ranges from the basics for survival at the bottom (such as food, shelter, clothing, and sleep) through to self-actualisation at the top (becoming the most authentic version of ourselves). I’m not sure where flowers fit into this. After all, we don’t eat them. We can’t turn them into shelter or wear them (the Kazakh content producer doesn’t count). But their transient beauty seems to do something to us and bring about sheer joy.
Keukenhof itself is transient in its own way. Although this year marks its 75th anniversary—and there was a lovely exhibition in one of the buildings showcasing its history—it is only open for about 7 weeks each year. Planting the seven million of bulbs needed to produce the spectacle begins the previous autumn and, at the time of writing this, it is now closed until 2026.
By the way, remember the flower parade I mentioned a few dozen paragraphs ago? It was one of the reasons I initially thought we should go to Keukenhof on Saturday, but due to the crowds that would make it difficult to actually see the floats and the road closures that would make it challenging to get back to Amsterdam, we decided to leave just after midday, before the parade passed through. However, I had a plan B up my sleeve that would turn out to be an excellent decision … but more about that in a future post.
THOUGHTS ABOUT TULIP SPOTTING:
- Book early. Don’t do what I did and wait until the week you visit to do research and book. There are a lot of resources online to help, from standbys like TripAdvisor and Google to hyper-specific websites like Tulip Festival Amsterdam. I think my last-minute tickets came from Tiqets or Viator, but you can also go directly to the Hop On, Hop Off bus.
- Go early. I would recommend getting the earliest transportation possible in an attempt to avoid the crowds. While Keukenhof was busy just after its opening, it was ten times as crowded when we left at midday.
- Bring your own food. Keukenhof is brilliant at a lot of different things, but food is not one of them. I would suggest bringing your own packed lunch and using one of the designated picnic areas.
- Know the rules. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a wonderful sight must be shared on Instagram, TikTok, or other social media. This tendency has resulted in people going to more extremes to get awe-inspiring and/or envy-inducing photos. When it comes to viewing tulips outside of Keukenhof, make sure to only go where the public is invited. Tulip farmers get understandably grumpy when people tromp through their fields.
- You don’t have to do it all. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but at 79-acres, Keukenhof is pretty big and can get rather crowded. While I’m sure that every last inch of it is splendid, you don’t need to spend the entire day there unless you genuinely want to. It’s a spectacle to be enjoyed, not slogged through.
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