Keukenhof: Walking through the Tulips

Two generations of Indians have grown up listening to the iconic song from Yash Chopra’s Silsila shot in the beautiful Tulip Gardens of Keukenhof near Amsterdam. The sight of Amitabh Bachhan running on the tulip fields and romancing Rekha is part of filmy folklore now. As we set into spring, it was time for us to relive those ‘reel’ moments in reality. Keukenhof gardens are open only for a period of one-and-a-half months in spring from March-end till mid-May.
We checked the program and settled on the weekend of 16th April to visit the famous place immortalized by Yashji. The rush was obvious and we realized while booking accommodation. Hotels in Amsterdam were totally booked out. The rush was more so because of the planned flower parade on the 16th. Till the last moment when we did not find anything, we had to settle for shared dormitory accommodation where we managed to get two beds in a six-bed room. Thankfully, for the second night we managed to get a hotel booking in Eindhoven for a respectable 65 EUR close to the station.
Our travel itinerary was the same as our previous Amsterdam trip last September which meant an early evening Easyjet flight at 5:50 PM. We landed at Schiphol after some delay at around 7:30. Since the buses to Keukenhoff leave from Schiphol we tried checking out the timings from the information centre but due to the long queue we gave up mid-way and decided to head for the city centre. After the 20-minute train ride we were at the city center and we walked towards the hotel or should I say dormitory. The ‘Travel hotel’ as it was called was close to Dam square and it involved a short walk down the road towards Dam square. Once we checked in, the receptionist mentioned the standard parameter – room no and handed the card to us, just that this time there were two extra parameters i.e. beds 1 and 6. It sounded odd but it was worth embracing the experience rather than cribbing about it. We learnt that our room was on 5th floor and there were no lifts. Once we digested that fact we decided to head towards the Dam square since it would make no sense to climb up 5 floors more than once. We set off walking and since it was getting late we settled for dinner at an Indian restaurant ‘Gandhi’ close to the ‘Dam’ square. Keeping in mind the long day in front of us, we decided to call it a day and head for our beds and taste the adventure. We climbed up the narrow steps and reached our room. One person was already fast asleep on one of the lower ‘births’ and surely was disturbed once we switched on the lights. That felt odd for sure. The room had a wash-basin and an attached toilet so at least we did not have to go out for that. We somehow managed to change into our bedtime clothes and finally dozed off into a much needed sleep.

We woke up early since we had to travel a long way to reach the gardens on time. I quickly took a shower and we hit the roads by 10. It was overcast but the rain just about held itself and the sun was playing hide and seek. We hoped it would stay that way. We took the train to Schiphol from Amsterdam Central and bought the bus tickets from the tourist information center – a return bus ticket for 14 Eur. By this time we were a bit hungry so we decided to have a heavy English breakfast so that we would devote the whole day only to the flowers without taking any food break. This turned out to be costly as within the 45 minutes we spent at the breakfast, the queue for the bus no 58 to Keukenhoff had multiplied quadruple times. It was so long that it even touched the end of the Schiphol terminal. We were thoroughly bogged down by this as the queue seemed to be at a standstill. At this rate, we thought, the tulips will go off to sleep by the time we reach. Quite a few tourist groups were present and many of them were pooling in for a cab to drive down to the gardens. With little hesitation, we decided to do the same. The rates were quite high at 70 Euro so we needed someone to share the cab with us. Luckily a group of three Indian students from Heidelberg, Germany agreed to share the cab with us and we were soon driving towards Keukenhoff. Keukenhoff was around 30 kms from Schiphol so I thought we would reach in about 20-35 mins but the day was different. It looked like the world was heading towards the gardens for the flower parade. There was huge amount of traffic and by the time we reached it was almost 12:30. Days are long as its summer so we were not unduly bothered. We had at least 7 hours of day-light ahead of us. We were awestruck from the moment we entered the gardens. There was a walkway with a canopy of trees and flowers of different colors on either side of the path. If you want to test the color capture of your camera, this was the place to be.

We saw from the lightest shades to the deepest ones and from bright to the pale. It had everything. The red, orange and lavender colors stood out in my eye. Asmi, being the flower-lover could hardly control her excitement. The crowd was in huge numbers and I could conclude that there were easily around 100,000 people who would visit the garden during the day. We were left confused as to which way to walk until we settled on a path. The crowd was such that often we would get stuck in a human-jam before proceeding on our path. Needless to say, we clicked numerous snaps on the way. While walking we noticed the wide tulip fields surrounding the garden and a canal flowing through it. The only disappointment was that we found out that the canal tickets were sold out since we had to get them earlier. We checked out a giant windmill in the center of the gardens (the windmill, the canal and the fields are featured prominently in that Dekha ek khwab song). Just like Mt. Titlis in Switzerland, this place was also full of Indian tourists and we even spoke to a couple who are residing in Hague. The flower parade was to pass at around 3:40 so most of the crowd started moving towards that. We had to take our positions outside the gate on the roadside but such was the crowd that we hardly even could see the road. It was hard to say whether it was outside a football stadium or a flower garden. We gave up after a couple of flower trucks passed by and thought of hitting those magnificent fields where you could almost see rows of different colors from a distance almost resembling a rainbow.

The Canal

The canal runs around the garden so we had to try all sorts of tricks to cross it and move on to the adjacent field. At times we even had to hit the road to cross over to the next field and in the process we got a better view of the parade. Truck after truck passed by with some mesmerizing decoration of flowers depicting various themes. Once the parade got over and we were done with the round of the fields, we headed back to the garden from we had to board the bus to Schiphol. Once we reached the gardens Asmi went for another short walk around the garden while I retired into the cafe. The breakfast had been fully digested and we needed some refueling. Unfortunately the kitchen had just shut down at 7 and we had to still be on a near-empty stomach. The bus queues were building up outside. We learnt that due to some major traffic jam, the buses were running late and none of the buses had returned from Amsterdam. So this was going to be long wait and to compensate, the band would be playing for us. What more could we ask for? We were in no hurry and were ready to wait for the bus and listen to some good music. Luckily we located a snack joint from where we managed a packet of French fries which would be enough to take us till dinner. There were two queues – one for Schiphol and the other was for Laden central. The Laden queue was comparatively shorter so we decided to move towards Laden and then from there take a train to Schiphol en route to Eindhoven. The plan seemed to have worked as we were quickly on board but we ended up spending too much on tickets as we made another miscalculation. We thought we will take the train to Schiphol and then a second train to Eindhoven. However, we later learnt that there was no direct train from Schiphol to Eindhoven and we had to change trains at Utrecht Central. In that case the best option would have been to skip Schiphol and instead take a direct train from Laden to Utrecht in order to take the train to Eindhoven.

Flower Parade

We lost an hour and a few extra Euros in the process and finally reached Eindhoven at 11:30 by 10:38 train from Utrecht. The Crown Inn hotel at Eindhoven was right at the city centre and just a 5 minute walk from the station. It was an awesome location to stay and so was the hotel. Unfortunately, we were barely able to walk by the time we checked in. The hotel had a restaurant but the kitchen had just closed so we had to go out to have our dinner. The city center was still buzzing with up to 6-7 pubs still operational and fully crowded with a partying Saturday-night crowd. However, there were only drinks to be seen on all the tables. For food we went for a Turkish kabab place which is open till late night and settled for a pizza dinner. By the time we were done, we were almost on out last legs and decided to call it a day in the wonderful hotel room.
The next day our task was simple. We had a flight at 11:30 from the local airport. There was no time for breakfast so we walked up to the station and took the airport bus. In the mean time we clicked a couple of snaps in front of the headquarters of Philips which the town is famous for. Our Wizzair flight took off on time and we reached Prague by 1:30 PM.