It's tulip season in Amsterdam. What an evocative thought that is. I'm happy to say it's an experience I've had rather than one I was saving for my bucket list. (What bucket list? Don't have one.) My husband and I spent a week in Amsterdam the last time the peak of tulip season coincided with both Easter and my birthday in mid-April, as it does this year. We stayed with Dutch friends in a wonderful neighborhood that reminded us (and them) of the Upper West Side, except it's cleaner, prettier, and has a canal (not one of the famous ones) and more little independent shops: a butcher, a baker, a pastry shop, a chocolatier. At the supermarket deli, they'll open a package and give you a taste of something exotic, like sliced ham with asparagus.
Their apartment was only a ten or fifteen minute tram ride from the old town with its ring of canals, cobblestone streets, and narrow 17th-century houses and from the superb museums. We went to the Concertgebouw to hear the St Matthew Passion. (The famed concert hall performed nothing else during Easter Week back then; this year, I see, they give concertgoers a couple of days' respite from Bach's overwhelming work.) And Keukenhof, the spectacular gardens that more than lives up to all the fuss about the Dutch tulips, was only a half hour bus ride away. A few hours at Keukenhof left me drunk on flowers.
Are ten pictures worth 250 words? You tell me.
Thank you for sharing those lovely pictures, Elizabeth! My heart beats a bit faster now. De Keukenhof is a real tourist attraction--I, a Dutchman, never visited it.
ReplyDeleteAnne, it's never too late! I emailed my friend with the apartment in Amsterdam yesterday—she also has a house in Utrecht—to confirm that the tulips are in bloom.
ReplyDeleteOh, how beautiful! Thanks for the photos. I needed that, because there's nothing blooming yet in South Dakota.
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised, Eve. In New York, the daffodils are out, but the magnolias got nipped in the bud last week thanks to two nights of temps in the 20s just when spring was coming along nicely.
DeleteDefinitely worth 10,000 words, Liz, and a thousand hugs. I'd love to see the canal.
ReplyDelete(And I just realized how much prettier your photos are compared to yesterday's!)
I commented on your post this morning, Leigh. Go look if you haven't seen it—it made me laugh!
DeleteAbsolutely beautiful! The lady who owned this house before we did planted a circle of tulips around some sort of ash tree which is no longer there. The stems & buds are just now starting to push their way through the ground. I expect to have tulips blooming in another couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteThere's a community garden three blocks away from me in New York that has a tulip festival every year with a few circular rows of plantings. Even on a small scale, tulips are a delight.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth and Elizabeth, you reminded me of my mother. She surrounded our ancient farmhouse with flowers, maintained ancestral flowerbeds, and had a sizeable vegetable garden. From childhood, I remember one of her children's mantras, three vegetables and a flower: "Lettuce turnip your tulips if you carrot all for me."
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