Sunday, April 19, 2009

FloraHolland Flower Auction


Last Tuesday Mom, Tony, and I traveled to Aalsmeer to visit the largest flower auction in the world, at the largest commercial building in the world. We arrived just before 8am to a flurry of activity - over 125,000 transactions take place there every day.

We watched the Dutch auction on the big screen, as buyers with everything from notepads to multiple computers bid on the day's fresh cut flowers. The going price for a tulip was around €.04 a stem - that even makes my 50 stems for €5 at the market seem like a steep price!



Next we walked around the cat walk over the distribution floor and watched as flowers were moved around in a way that resembled a scene from Ants.




It is amazing that these flowers come from around the world every night, are auctioned off the next morning, and reach the shops in your town the next day!

1 comment:

Aunt Spicy said...

Wow! Totally cool post, I had no idea! I always seem to miss any flowers in bloom, either too early in the season or far too late...someday!