Keukenhof — a Tulip Dream — Behind the Next Corner
Tulips and smiles
I had a dream. A dream of spring. A dream of tulip fields in bloom below trees green with new leaves. A dream of a flower haven where you can walk on paths in the midst of beauty which takes your breath away. A dream of waking spring in the midst of an explosion of color. A dream of myself, alone with magnificent nature. I wanted to visit Keukenhof.
And now we are here. In a massive carpark where buses spit out crowds of visitors. An endless queue stretches to the gates and behind them, there is some awful circus music being played. It’s so crowded that you cannot move. Is this what I dreamed about?
We quickly slip inside because we cleverly bought tickets in advance on the internet. Due to the crowds, I feel slightly dazed. This is not my spring dream! This is overcrowded chaos! I feel cheated.
Keukenhof. The biggest spring garden in the whole of Europe. In the 15th century, there used to be the kitchen garden of the Teylingen Castle. The foundation of the park was laid down in 1857 by garden architects Jan David Zocher and his son Luis Paul Zocher when they designed the current
English style garden.
The current Keukenhof was born thanks to the efforts of twenty traders with
flower bulbs who, in 1949, came up with a plan to use the park as an exhibition space. The result is astonishing. These days there are five pavilions named after members of the royal family, 32 hectares of park interlaced with streams and paths, 7 million bulbs which come into bloom over two
months every year.
Once I saw pictures of this splendor on the internet and since then I have wanted to see it. But in those pictures, there were no people.
We run through the biggest crowd behind the gate and dive among trees towards the smaller paths. There are slightly less people there. Slowly I am starting to perceive the beauty of this place.
Wherever you look you can feast your eyes on a different interesting view. Colors, shapes, gigantic patterns from cheerfully colored flowers. Daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, and of course tulips, tulips all over the place. Even if we are not here on our own, as I was naively imagining, it is still beautiful.
We admire the splendidly arranged flowerbeds, laugh at kitsch pavilions but still take pictures of us in front of them. We walk through the various parts of the garden: Japanese, English, historical… We jump on the stepping stones in the decorative lake. We are enjoying ourselves.
Later I found out that there are two days when the Keukenhof is at its busiest in the whole year. Easter Monday and the day of the Bloemencorso show. On these days some visitors even don’t get into the park as its capacity is full. Guess, when we visited… Of course we manage to hit the latter. But if you avoid these busy days and come in the morning, immediately after opening, you might experience my flower dream. A dream about spring in splendor without people. I know I will do that the next time.
We are visiting the exhibition pavilions. It is a little warmer there than outside, on the cool Dutch April day. Inside there are various cultivars of tulips, roses, lilies… Everywhere around us are flowers arrangements, often even more kitsch than the pavilions outside. At least there is something to look at.
We sit down in an alcove in a corner and eat a snack with a view of a stream outside. I lie down tired on a bench. A lady in a wheelchair passes by. Our eyes meet and we exchange smiles, the first of many on that day.
Alternately we walk among the imaginatively made flowerbeds outside and exhibition halls, each of which has its own theme. There are many people, that’s true. We have to weave our way through, twist in a funny manner to take a picture with nobody in, as everybody else does. It makes me laugh.
These pictures will further spread the myth of a peopleless flower dream. So what — dreams are beautiful.
A family passes by, in the middle a gentleman on a wheelie bed. He is smiling. That smile will stay with me, I will take it home. Everybody here is smiling.
Maybe this place was not exactly what I wanted. It was not exactly what I imagined — but after all, that’s what travel is about. It doesn’t matter.
Keukenhof has a smile for everybody.
Originally published at https://behindthenextcorner.com on June 1, 2021. You can find more travel stories like this on my blog! :)
