La Vida Laura

The first time I visited The Netherlands, something occurred to me just as I was leaving the country: I hadn’t seen any tulips. This, of course, made perfect sense, as I had visited in the summertime, well past the peak flower season. Still, you think Holland, and you think tulips, preferably fields and fields of them, straight out of some Pinterest-inspired vacation fantasy dream. Or, at least, that’s what I think of.

Suffice it to say, I always knew I wanted to return to The Netherlands sometime in the spring, if for no other reason than the tulips. So, when I found myself planning a trip to Amsterdam for Easter weekend, I knew seeing as many tulips as humanly possible was paramount. And when it comes to seeing tulips, it’s seems there is one place that’s a must: the Keukenhof.

The Keukenhof Gardens are located in Lisse, about a half hour southwest of Amsterdam, and are open from mid-March to mid-May each year. To get there, I grabbed a train from Amsterdam Centraal Station and headed to Schipol Airport, where I then caught a shuttle bus to the Keukenhof. I visited on Easter Sunday, and the crowds both at Schipol and the Keukenhof itself were fairly insane. Everyone, it seemed, thought that roaming among the flowers was the perfect way to spend Easter.

Despite the crowds – which, to be honest, were a little soul-crushing at times – the Keukenhof was worth the hassle. The gardens are enormous and the variety of flowers is incredible; there were tulips in more colors and varieties than I could have ever imagined, and certainly more than I could ever count. Predictably, I loved everything about the gardens, as is probably obvious from the amount of pictures in this post. I wanted to photograph every blossom at the Keukenhof, and the snapshots you see here are only a fraction of the pictures I actually took. Needless to say, then, if you’re planning a trip to The Netherlands in the springtime, I would consider the Keukenhoff is a must.

Just make sure your memory card has a lot of space.