Holland

As I was growing up, my parents had a friend who visited each year showing slides of his ministry in the Netherlands. I watched all of the slides, but the ones that captivated me were the ones that featured the tulips in bloom in Holland. So one of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was to see those blossoms for myself. Perhaps many of you share that same desire.

One of the most pleasant ways to fulfill that dream is to take a river cruise, operated by several companies from the end of March through the middle of May. The cruise my husband and I took was on MS River Navigator, operated by Vantage Travel, a company headquartered in Boston that caters to Americans with amenities such as smoke-free boats. River-cruising boats carry between 120 and 180 passengers and generally, because of their shallow draft, anchor in the center of towns and cities, giving passengers the ability to walk about. The boats are staffed with English-speaking, cordial, accommodating crews, along with experienced, helpful guides. The food is plentiful and delicious, the cabins small but adequate, and other amenities include an open upper deck for sight-seeing on pleasant days when the boat is underway.

Most of the spring river boat cruises begin and end in Amsterdam, with its canals and the outstanding Rijksmuseum, and last from 10 days to two weeks. Our cruise had a number of stops in both the Netherlands and Belgium, and in addition to tulip blossoms, we enjoyed seeing Delft pottery and tasting and learning about Dutch cheese and Belgian chocolate. Two highlights of the flower culture were visits to a bulb farm and to Keukenhof, the extraordinary garden that is open only during the spring months and is one of the major tourist attractions in the Netherlands.

Keukenhof’s carefully tended beds, serene pools, meandering paths and striking pavilions provide the visitor with unforgettable scenes of beauty. The range of colors is amazing, from deep purples to white. There are stripes, blended colors, enormous blooms larger than my hand and tiny, petite ones. Even though thousands of visitors enjoy the gardens, it is so large that the crowds are not a problem. There are places to eat, photo opportunities galore, and benches on which to sit and absorb the glorious array.

Along the northern parts of the Netherlands, nestled up against the dikes that protect the country from the North Sea, are the bulb farms, another significant part of the tulip industry. Visiting one of these farms opened our eyes to something of which we were unaware. These farmers’ interest is the bulbs. As soon as the blooms appear, they are cut off and discarded, so that the energy of the plant will be concentrated on the bulb itself. It takes about three years for the bulb to grow from its inception as a nodule on a larger bulb to the commercially viable bulb that will be offered for sale around the world. Our visit coincided with daffodil blossoms which were about to be sacrificed for the sake of their bulbs.

An additional facet of the tulip business can be seen at Aalsmeer where tulips along with other blooming plants are brought to be auctioned off. Visitors are invited to stroll along a raised walkway that circles around one of the several football field-sized warehouses. An intricate process is revealed below as the blooms, picked that morning, are off-loaded on to motorized carts, pulled into showrooms filled with buyers with computers. The lot is shown on two large screens in its particular bidding room, and once the bidding is completed, the lot is tagged, loaded onto conveyor belts, and taken to waiting semis that drive their loads to the nearby airport or across Europe. The process begins at five a.m. or so and is pretty much finished by nine. Thus the freshly picked blossoms arrive in the states for sale the same afternoon or first thing the next morning.

Additional highlights of the our cruise included stops or excursions to Rotterdam, exploring the delightful Belgian town of Bruges, time in Antwerp, a visit to the World Heritage windmill site near Kinderdijk, market day in Hoorn, a drive over the huge dyke that protects the interior of the Netherlands from the North Sea, and a unique planetarium in a house museum in Franeker.

After interesting days of touring and sightseeing, it was pleasant to return to the boat for tasty food, stimulating conversations and, on several occasions, on-board entertainment. We were treated to lectures and/or demonstrations about the making of their world famous cheese, the production of Belgian chocolate, designing delicate silver filigree jewelry, and the ‘tulip mania’ culture that flourished for a while in earlier years, similar to today’s ‘futures markets’.

Depending on the choice of cabin level, the price of such river boat cruises can vary widely. We have found that a careful internet search can yield competitive rates and, once you have travelled with one of these companies, you receive e-mail notification of special deals that can lower the price significantly. Included airfare, two-for-one deals (although you have to watch those, sometimes they are not as good a deal as you first thought), and last-minute fill-the-empty-cabins specials.

A dream fulfilled is special, and a spring-time visit to the Netherlands when the tulips are blooming is beyond compare.