A dash to see the tulip fields near Amsterdam...

Those Dutch tulip fields, wow! All the colours of the rainbow!!! what an experience and worth every one of the 716km to get there!!! It really was frighteningly long drive from Munich to Amsterdam almost certainly eclipsing any pf our previous ‘one day journeys’ but boy was it worth it!!! With plans to revisit Germany in a separate leg later in the year, this really was ‘country hopping’ at its best!

So morning broke to a brief respite in the relenting rain that had hampered the journey northwards from Munich, so we headed into the centre of the tulip fields near Haarlem… pausing briefly to admire the wonderful floats from the Tulip parade

Keukenhof

With the rain leaving us again briefly we had intended to visit yet in the end it was nothing more than simply popping our heads into the famous Keukenhof gardens to both see the displays (at a distance) and to check out the amazing array of bulbs and their sellers nearby…

Especially as we’d got a tip of exactly where to go to see them in the actual fields, this proved a brilliant hour of dotting in and around the small canals/dykes to see yet more dazzling displays of natural colours – from Tulips to Hyacinths, to Daffodils to wild flowers! (even the odd stray chick on the road that needed rescuing too!)

This was yet another real highlight of the trip so far … next time we will do it on bikes!!! Leaving the achingly beautiful fields of colour, we headed towards the coast and chance to see another natural sight…. the sand dunes that surround Noordwijk.

But that wasn’t it for the day… a trip to see working windmills at Zaanse Schans… a place i remember fondly from pervious visits, and I’m sure the girls will now hold similar memories…. it was the perfect mix of great windmills, interactive working tours inside, good hot chocolate and lots of syrup waffles!