Keukenhof & Leiden

Chris and I love to celebrate our wedding anniversary by getting each other traditional gifts. I guess I should clarify. I like to celebrate our anniversary by getting traditional gifts. Chris likes to go along with it to make me happy.

When I saw that the fourth anniversary gift is "fruit and flowers" I knew I had a winner. We live near Holland, and flowers abound in our anniversary month - April!

I have had a love of tulips since I was a child. Love really probably doesn't describe it enough. Obsession, maybe? My mother used to read me a children's story about the history of tulips, and I was hooked at that young age.

I really was not picky as a bride about my wedding details. The one thing I absolutely had to have was a tulip as our wedding flower. So, we got married in April.

This year, to celebrate the "fruit and flower" anniversary, we decided to take an entire weekend to follow the tulip in Holland. We were originally going to go toward the end of April, but decided to move it to last weekend when we booked a trip to the United States. So, off we went.



It was heavenly for me. I have decided that Heaven MUST include gardens full of tulips, along with my favorite lemon and orange trees from Italy.





First of all, we found a great kid-friendly hotel. In fact, this entire trip was child-friendly. Bonus! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Leiden. It turned out to be more expensive than we liked, but worth it. Did you know that Leiden was the city where the first tulip bulb was planted in Holland? I did!

We drove the tulip route, spent an entire day at Keukenhof, and enjoyed every minute of it.

There was a petting zoo at Keukenhof. Jackson got to see his first cow, goats, bunnies, and chickens up close!



There were also all the extra trappings of a traditional Dutch scene at Keukenhof - a man making wooden shoes and a windmill to name a couple.



On Sunday, we checked out the city of Leiden. Not a must see, but pretty. Leiden is known to Americans as the city the Pilgrims lived in for a decade before sailing to America. It's also the city where Rembrandt was born. However, trying to find the Pilgrim landmarks is not easy, as they are not well-marked. I heard once from a fellow American that if you were to ask a resident of Leiden about the Pilgrims that they would have no idea what you were talking about.

So, we spent about an hour walking in a circle until we finally found William Brewstersteeg - an alleyway apparently - where William Brewster had his printing press. I was not wanting to give up on finding this, as Jackson and I are both descendents of his. Luckily, we did find it, snapped a picture, and our weekend was complete.

Now begins our whirlwind packing and organizing to get out of here by Wednesday morning! We will travel to the United States so that Jackson can be properly introduced to his country. We can't wait!