Keukenhof, an enormous park on Holland's North Sea coast where the vast tulip fields are located and not far from Amsterdam, has on display over 7 million flowering bulbs (tulip, daffodil, crocus, hyacinth and more) plus numerous special exhibitions. Thanks to an idea from Pieter Bos, we stored our luggage at Schipol Airport and spent most of the day at the park. It was spectacularly beautiful when we arrived in Amsterdam, but in the time it took us to buy bus tickets to go to Keukenhof it had clouded up, and during our visit it started sprinkling and then pouring. Still, we managed to see the entire thing. It's a bit early for many of the outdoor tulips, but the Willem-Alexander Pavilion has literally thousands of tulip varieties in bloom. It was simply breathtaking.

I took many, many pictures of the flowers but have whittled them down to relatively few. Keukenhof was one of the highlights of our short visit to Amsterdam and the blooms were so fantastic, I simply had to devote a small gallery to them.