The Netherlands! (Part Two)

Our plan was to go to straight to Keukenhof Gardens but we decided to take a detour through Amsterdam to find the I amsterdam sign.  We asked someone about it when we went to the Anne Frank house and wondered if we could walk from there but it would have taken too long.  So we thought we'd take a "quick" trip into the city.  First, we didn't even really know where it was and the GPS didn't either.  We found somewhere that said it was near a museum.  After many one-way streets, LOTS of traffic and more-minutes-than-we-had-to-spare later, we finally found it.  We parked, ran over, got our picture and went back to the car.  Hey, we can say we've seen it in person!

Next we headed to Keukenhof to see the TULIPS!  We got there a little late in the day and most people were leaving so we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.  We saw some tulips in pots on the way in and I was getting a bit excited when we saw this flower bed...

Oooh, some more beautiful flowers!

Most of the beds had crocus.  Pretty, but I still couldn't wait to see the bursts of color from all of the tulips.  I had seen pictures and knew just how amazing they were!

 

I got a little nervous when I just started seeing green and not many blooms...

Yep, that's my disappointed face.  So sad that this huge flower bed could have been FULL of color!

 

Not quite sure what that statue was.  We nicknamed it "Swan Butt."

And folks, that was about it.  We wandered around a little more but it just kept making me so sad seeing all of the tulips leaves with no blooms.  With the long, cold winter they had, we were just a little too early.  Sad. They had a greenhouse that we meandered through.  Such cool varieties that I had never seen in there!

 

I really liked this cute bed with these tiny flowers.  The color combo was perfect.  It reminded me of a little fairy garden.  The picture doesn't really capture how pretty each of those little blooms were.

Ah man...can you even imagine what that would have looked like with the tulips in bloom?!  Okay, I'll stop.  :)

Cool structure over the water.  I'm sure little kids are running up and down on most days.  It was really nice to have no one else around!

You can't see it in this picture, but behind this windmill is a HUGE field that is covered in tulips (of course, not in bloom at the time).  It's a picture that is on alot of calendars and ads.  Do these shoes make my feet look big?

Love these colors!

And that was the Netherlands!  Off we go to Belgium!