Trip Belgium and Holland in Springtime Day 11

Thursday April 16

A big deal happening today. Everybody says “the main reason for this trip”. Well, we had a glorious day. But all days were great so far anyway. 

From the bus: trees trimmed in a funny (to me) way.

The first tulip fields!

 

Our first stop was "Annemieke's Pluktuin". The only company they are welcoming as a group is Grand Circle because they supported them at the start. Annemieke's story is heartwarming. The end of the story is that she wanted to give young people with difficulties in their lives a job to ground themselves again, no matter how their productivity is each day. 

And her husband Peter is supporting her. She took some of his fields to plant tulips and later in the year all sorts of mixed flowers for "pick yourself". They were both wonderful friendly, kind and helpful people to us too.

We were tought the proper way to pick the tulips (grab at the very bottom and just pull ... with or without the bulb, doesn't matter). We each could pick 10. 

It was so much fun. 

They wrapped them for us with the room number written on the paper and put into the bottom of the bus.

And then we continued to Keukenhof. Yes, the Keukenhof which is only for about 6 weeks each year. I must say it was very good organized even though there were so many cars, busses, group of people. Then we were free to wander around. We had a paper map but it didn't do much good. We are good at map reading but if you didn't know which entry you came in you really need to study it. So James and I just wandered. It didn't matter.

The ship had given us lunch boxes and since it was passed noon we "dealt" with that so we didn't have to carry it any longer in the green OAT backpack, only in our bellies. We could not find a bench but these stones.

A mechanical organ which played very loud and cheerful.

There was also an indoor flower show. We popped in briefly and the Proteas caught my eyes. 

But soon we decided to be rather outside.

Oh no. A whole stand with amaryllis ... and we can't take them with us.

I forgot to take a picture at the entrance when we arrived. So here is the map we had (which didn't really help us much). But we are back at the bus and soon on our way back to the ship.

Got text from Maren asking for the address of the ship, where to pick us up tomorrow.

Screenshot! That is where the ship is.

As soon as we arrived of course I wanted to take care of our tulips.

Randy had suggested the ice bucket. No way. That thing is way to little. Really don't want to cut the tulips short. The insert of the bathroom trash can is just right.

And some short tulips in a champagne glass. The first photo makes the tulips in focus but James out of focus.

And vise versa.

We were all greeted when returning with music. Vasil played New Orleans music. Nice.

It was around 5pm. It was a lot of driving. At 6 pm we needed to be in the lounge to hear the Disembarkation Briefing. At 6:45pm the Port Talk. At 7pm dinner.

But afterwards we went to our room to get sorted out a bit. Texting and emails. It has to be done sometimes. And later we had to keep our fingers crossed and then got the good news that William passed his driver's license road test. Congratulations! But it makes us think how time runs away fast.

The step count? 9,676 (to much bus-sitting)