Tulips and Travel

Tuesday April 19th 2011
Another fine day! We had a choice of either visiting the Ten Boom museum or the tulip fields. I preferred the museum option but Bruce was keener on seeing the tulips. We decided to try the museum option first, being unsure as to when the English tour would be held.
Unfortunately when we arrived at the museum, we found out that there were no English tours until the afternoon, and we needed to catch a train after lunch to take us to Düsseldorf airport so that we could catch our plane home. So off into the countryside we went to find some tulips.
Well, many of the tulips weren’t yet in flower or the land was fallow so it took rather a long time to find them. But once we did we were entranced by the colourful stripes carpeting the fields. The orange and yellow bicoloured variety were quite splendid.
Stripes of purple turned out to be hyacinths.
We walked into one field to get a closer look but unfortunately the camera doesn’t do justice to the play of light on the opened flowers.
After lunch we were driven back to Haarlem Station to catch our train. There were some fascinating sights as we passed through Amsterdam.



Out in the countryside between towns and villages, it was interesting to note the variety of livestock, including sheep, in Holland. It was quite funny seeing a cow drinking out of one of the many open drains in the fields, thinking of the furore it'd cause here and the chaos that would ensue in Holland should the farmers be forced to apply the same rules regarding fencing off stock from waterways that are now proving such a problem here.
The flights home was rather uneventful but, as usual, quite exhausting, so we were glad to be picked up at Dunedin airport on Thursday night and to have a comfortable stay at Longbourne Lodge where we were allowed to sleep in and make our way home when we were ready on Friday morning. Much safer than trying to drive home in the dark completely exhausted even though it would have been a less than 2 hour journey.