During Oscar's second week of spring break, we went back to the Netherlands (you might recall that
we went last year). We stayed at the same
Eurocamp trailer park as before. The trailers are clean, cheap, have a refrigerator and oven (so we bring and cook our own food), there is free wireless Internet at the shopping center, and admission to the on-site amusement park is built in to the price of the trailer. We had two full days in the Netherlands so we spent one day at the Keukenhof and we spent the other day at the amusement park. Oscar complained that the Keukenhof was just "walking and looking". He found the amusement park to be much more tolerable.
Day One: Keukenhof
The
Keukenhof is the world's largest flower garden -- over seven million bulbs. I learned during this year's visit that every bulb is lifted and replanted by hand each year. On the day we visited, the weather was really nice -- mostly sunny, high temperature in the upper 60s, and a light breeze that lasted the whole day. In short, it was a perfect day for walking and looking.
Really great logo design.
As we were walking in, Oscar and Calvin took a detour to play with this penny crusher machine. I looked away for a moment and the next thing I heard was Calvin crying. Oscar had spun the crank around when Calvin wasn't looking and it hit him (Calvin) in the forehead. So that explains the bruise on Calvin's head in all of the photos.
Last year we waited until the end of the day to try and get a family picture and it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. This year we did the family photo before lunch. I found a grassy spot in relative shade right in front of some flowers. The great thing about this spot was the bush in the background. I had been trying to find a place where we would not have other people in the background and this spot worked really well for that. I put the camera on a tripod, set a ten second timer, and ran into the frame. We tried that five or six times until we ended up with a really nice photo. I knew we weren't going to get anything better than this so we packed up the camera and moved on for more walking and looking.
This is one of my favorite flower photos from our Keukenhof visit.
If you look closely, you will see a single gray hair on my right temple. I suppose there will eventually be more. Maybe even on both sides...
Keukenhof = 80 acres of this. So beautiful...
This gardener was dead-heading some early-blooming tulips that were done for the season.
The boys liked watching people play a live chess game with large pieces. I like this photo of the knight. The pieces are two or three feet tall.
Day Two: Amusement Park
The boys really enjoyed the amusement park. We were there all day...
The boys wanted me to ride the "big" roller coaster.
The boys remembered this slide from last year. This ride was self-service -- no employee supervision. That meant nobody was enforcing rules like "Don't go face first" and "Be sure to hold on to your bag on the way down".
Sara only went once. She did not like it.
Whatever happened to "Collect All 4"?
We all enjoyed anther trip to the Netherlands. We still haven't been to Amsterdam; Maybe next year...
