Our special treat for Easter morning was to visit the world famous Keukenhof gardens which is the showcase for spring flowers in Holland. Well as we soon found out and feared, spring was about 3 weeks behind in Europe because of the unusually cold winter we had this past year. So with only the daffodil fields in bloom and about 15 % of the garden's flowers in bloom we still found the gardens to be amazing. It was a cool day with some chances of rain so we were prepared and had open minds.
Here is a daffodil field in full bloom. Love the ominous clouds in the background???!!
We had to deal with a little temper tantrum right as we got the gates and eventhough I was horribly frustrated with the two kiddos at the time, my mom captured my lesson giving experience in a picture and it does look a little cute.
The theme to this year's gardens was From Russia with Love, so everything had some type of Russian theme. Now with not all the flowers up it was a bit hard to imagine all the colors we could have seen but we found some fun little things that stuck out amongst the vast green colors of leaves. I really want some of these little feet for my garden...I'm not much for lawn ornaments but these were cute!
This was a really cool tulip design on the side of a hill made up of what looked like white and purple snow drops.
Explosion of color from these hycinthias!!!
We caught some of the gardeners tending to these beds of tulips. You can see the daffodils in the back and these little babies are about a week and a half from popping!!!
The layouts of all the flower beds were just amazing and the walkways, the trees, the fountains and everything still made this gloomy looking day feel romantic and special.
Out in the middle of one of the ponds where little lily pad platforms to go out on. They freaked me out a bit, but I did get my mom to venture out on them and caught about 5 other people trying to pose on them.
Mom caught Kevin and I getting ready for our pose in front of the fountain in fine form...as you can see though, I added a lot of color to our pictures with the absence of flowers with my bright yellow, navy and green rain coat!!!
On the east side of the grounds there were loads of beds with early blooming flowers so the three flowers of our little group all posed together in front of them.
Addison and I tried on some "XL" wooden shoes for fun.
We had really light lunch in one of the cafes and ended up sitting with an older couple from Germany. They had visited the States quite a few times...actually drove from coast to coast once, but they love Florida which most Europeans do. I got a real kick out of my mom asking them if they had heard of the Amana Colonies in Iowa as it was an old German settlement near where I grew up, but I think they thought she said something about California...it was a bit confusing because they didn't speak the best English, but we obviously didn't speak any German. After lunch we found it to be a bit cooler than before so I even had to pop my stocking cap on while we admired the swans.
Our family pic....
We made our way back around the the windmill and got another nice family picture there as well.
There was a guy actually carving up some wooden shoes and wood burning names into some of the souvenir little shoes from the gift shop behind him. Very interesting to watch and I bet even more interesting to wear for real.
Here is my little human tulip, Addison Marie, as she matches these lovely pink tulips with her pink camo hat and green rain coat.
I absolutely loved the inspiration gardens and got loads of ideas for the future. Now I probably won't put big cutouts of Russian dolls in pots but this cute picture of Harry and I, I may treasure forever.
I saw this birdhouse inspired tree house, but didn't realize there were feet on it until I was looking back through my pictures...how bizarre!
It was nice to be able to let the kids run around a bit at the gardens, but that little Harrison...we had to keep close reigns on him because he wanted to run out on the grass and pick flowers for mommy the whole day.
This won my vote for best water feature at the gardens...a zig zagged stair case over the water. Dad and Kevin had a go at it.
Our very last stop was in the indoor garden which showcased all the different varieties of tulips they had and we used that as our reference to what it should have looked like outside if things were in full bloom. We got the names of our favorite ones and hope we can find them when we get back home. It was so amazing to just see all the different colors!!!
Harry found a pair of wooden shoes too!
So did my mom and dad...
That night we made strong attempts to find a supermarket to get a few bits to make up our super as it was Easter Sunday evening and nothing was open except for McDonald's and the buffet at our hotel was 29.50 Euro per person (yeah right! for a buffet? really??). With whirlwind tour through Leiden which is a really pretty town we found market across from the train station. Mom, the kids and I stayed in the car as the boys fought through the masses to get us some sandwich supplies and other goodies. Dad was so fascinated with the chaos in this market and he thought I would have just freaked out if I would have gone in. I do have to admit that I was a bit nervous letting the boys pick out dinner, but they did a pretty good job.
Sad part about the evening was that little Addie was running a fever. She seemed to be in good spirits but had the chills so we nested her up in bed and her brother joined the fun.
We thought that a good way to get her cooled down was to go for a swim in the hotel pool. She had gone the night before with Kevin but we wanted to give Harrison a try. Now Addison is my fish and Harrison holds on for dear life in the water which is crazy because he is normally fearless. We did manage to have a little fun before heading back and settling in before our big day in Amsterdam.
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