Keukenhof Flower Garden

After visiting the flower auction, we headed to Keukenhof to visit the flower bulb garden. Mom, of course, was in heaven among all the flowers.

Here are my favorite photos from the day:









The rest of the pictures can be found here.

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!

Botanical Gardens

Pictures from my visit to TU Delft Botanical Gardens; more can be found here.

Tulip Bike Ride

We're breaking now from our regularly scheduled programming (a recap of Ireland and St. Patrick's Day) to bring you something completely different: pictures from our bike ride today through the tulips fields between Haarlem and Leiden.

We set out this morning on a 40km bike ride in abundant sunshine to see the tulip fields and Keukenhof Gardens. Even though the fields of tulips weren't quite blooming yet, many were colored with assortments of daffodils and crocuses.

About halfway through the bike ride, we pulled off to visit the amazing Keukenhof Gardens. While outside the tulips weren't yet in bloom, the huge conservatory buildings (named after Dutch royalty) housed a beautiful selection of tulips, crocuses, daffodils, orchids, and other flowers. The grounds of the gardens were magnificent and I can't wait to go back with my mom in a few weeks to see them in full bloom.

Of course, we also had to stop in the petting zoo to see the new baby lambs. Aren't they cute? The baby kids, as in goats, were a little more skittish and wouldn't let people pet them.

You can find the rest of our pictures from the bike ride here.

Our Weeds are Better than Yours

All over Holland spring is coming!

Any available patch of ground is blooming!

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly @ the Market

The Good:

Tulips were on sale: 50 blooms for €5; this is only half of them. I am going to miss having fresh flowers all over the house when we move back to the States.

The Bad:

The muffin man has increased his price from 6 for €2 to 6 for €2.50. He says they're bigger. But let's all be honest, it isn't like I'm going to put the extra 25% back in the bag for next time...So really the muffins now cost an extra €.0833 a piece. Trust me, it adds up at the rate we eat muffins around here.

The Ugly:

I promise you did not want to see a picture of this one. Matt and I really enjoy eating clementines; they are the perfect picnic/train/bus snack - easy to peel and little mess. Apparently it must be getting close to the end of the season and all the clementines at the market looked like they were already molding. I wonder who buys them...

Almost Tulip Time...

They say the tulips start blooming in mid-March. I can't wait!

Tulips Matt brought me home from the market.

Valentine's Day

While the holiday is known and celebrated over here (unlike Halloween), Valentine's Day is a much different affair. There is no monstrosity of candy, flowers, and over-priced fixed dinners, but rather subtle window displays and a few heart themed offerings.

Tonight we are not going off to a romantic dinner for two, but rather out with a group of Matt's lab mates. When Matt inquired as to the lack of Valentine's plans, most responded that their girlfriends/wives had no interest in the holiday. Even in strolling the market today, while references to Valentine's could be seen, there was no mark-up in the cost of flowers. Not even for a dozen, long-stemmed, red roses - they were still just €8.50 (compared with $50 to $100 in the US delivered).
Unfortunately, this also means there are no heart-shaped Reeses' in stores. I just hope they still have Cadbury eggs at Easter.

Cheese and Chocolate

Switzerland is famous for two of our favorite things: cheese and chocolate. That fact alone guaranteed that our weekend in the of land neutrality would be wonderful. We arrived in the city of Geneva and headed to our hostel to drop off our bags. When we checked in, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Geneva gives all its hotel and hostel guests free transportation within the city. What a deal!

We then hopped onto the tram and headed out to Botanical Gardens for a picnic lunch. The gardens (and conservatories) were free to the public. Even in the dead of winter and the middle of the work day, they were quite full of people. It seemed to be a popular running spot for locals. After enjoying our lunch in the warm tropical conservatory, we perused the gardens and noticed there was even a deer reserve in the gardens. I imagine this would be the perfect place to spend a warm spring afternoon when the flowers will be in full bloom.

Our next stop was the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum. The permanent exhibit explained the founding, history, and role of the organization. While I believe the museum was cutting edge at one point, the 10 projectors needed to show a single 8-minute slide show seems a little out of date. I wonder what the return on investment would be to pay someone to create a movie with the slides verses the cost of running so many projectors. However, features like the large transparent, layered photographs of wars and natural disasters were visually compelling. One of the rooms contains all of the POW cards from WWI and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Also on display was the Nobel Peace Prize that Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, was awarded in 1901. Dunant was the first recipient of the prize. The International Committee of the Red Cross has gone on to win 3 more Nobel Peace Prizes during the last century.

The highlight of the museum was actually the temporary exhibit Walls Between People. It was a look at 8 different walls that have been built to separate people. The photographs of the walls showed how people were separated, lives disrupted, and other effects of the wall. It was interesting to see the world/humanitarian view of the wall between Mexico and the US and how it wasn't depicted that much differently from the barbed wire enclaves of Spain in Morocco or the barbed wire line between Pakistan and India.

Our last stop for the day was the United Nations' Palace of the Nations - quite possibly the least inviting tour ever. Nowhere was their a tour schedule; water damaged directional signs pointed into locked doors and the one open door lead to workers sitting at their desks beneath signs that completely mislabeled their function. After the security check, badge issuing, and payment, we were directed to an obscure door #39 "past the parking lot and to the left." To our amazement, there were actually a lot of people behind the door, and we joined them for what was actually a pretty good tour.

The tour took us through the "old" and "new" buildings, a few conference rooms, temporary exhibits and past gifts from around the world. It was similar to the Peace Palace in The Hague, in that every part of the building was built with materials from around the world and decorated with gifts from visiting dignitaries.

As the sun set, we strolled along through the parks that follow the shoreline of Lake Geneva. The view of the lake and mountains was positively breathtaking.

The rest of the day's picture are on our Flickr site.