Amsterdam + Keukenhof

[pimpinett]

I was in Amsterdam with my mother in April last year, and it struck me that I haven't done anything with the photos from that weekend yet. I didn't think it was possible, but Keukenhof was spring-blooming bulb overload even for me, and I love bulbs, especially tulips and fritillarias. I took a fuckload of photographs, of course, and just could not be bothered to sort them through when we came home. Most of them were mainly intended as a sort of bulb wishlist for myself, anyway.



So obviously I'm intending to pester you with some of them. Amsterdam was a nice city, I liked it.





Fritillaria - a name sort that unfortunately wasn't commercially available last time I checked. There were four or five different ones in varying shades of pale yellow, orange, red and apricot, probably crosses between the different colour forms of Fritillaria imperialis, maybe with some F. raddeana thrown in too. They were named after classical composers, I think this might have been Bach. Really lovely.



Fritillaria raddeana. First time I saw them in person, although I've been jonesing for them for a couple of years. The bulbs are not very common in commerce, outrageously expensive and the growing information ranges from very easy to quite difficult, so I haven't caved and bought one yet. I love the dark, reddish stems.


Narcissus 'Rip van Winkle' - a very old name sort, 19th century or older, small, cute, doesn't really look much like a daffodil, but it is.



'Cynthia', a Tulipa clusiana variety. Also quite small and delicate. I like big, vulgar tulips, parrots and the like, but these small species tulips and their name sorts are very pretty too.



This is how the Dutch countryside looks in spring - everyone knows that the Netherlands is the world's largest producer of flower bulbs, but for some reason I hadn't quite drawn the conclusion that there would be myriads of bulbs being grown and flowering freely in the fields everywhere; daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, you name it. It was lovely.

Comments

[volksjager.livejournal.com]

What amazed me ehrn I was there was the way the cars and bikes share the road. I started laughing in my cab. The driver asked why ? I told him this would not fly in the US and you'd see people going over the hood of cars left and right.

[pimpinett.livejournal.com]

The bikers totally rule the streets in Amsterdam. :)

[volksjager.livejournal.com]

Did you meet any nice Hookers ?

[pimpinett.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm aware of. Did you?

[volksjager.livejournal.com]

When i was in the center of that square they kept walking up and handing out their cards.

[pimpinett.livejournal.com]

We had a look around the old church in the red light district one morning, and there were women working those windows even then. We stayed in the neighbourhood of Museumplein, so we didn't spend a lot of time in that part of town.

[cordelia-rose.livejournal.com]

Your photos make me happy. It's such a lovely city! However it was record cold and snowing and raining and windy the whole week I was there with my dad last march. :( No picnics in the park for us. Still, it was great fun.

[pimpinett.livejournal.com]

We were there in early April and it was still record cold for the season, apparently, but the weather was nice enough and it was still quite a bit milder than Stockholm, so we didn't think much about it. I'm glad we had such good weather at Keukenhof.

[nodding-folk.livejournal.com]

You were lucky, I worked a few seasons at Keukenhof and the weather was often miserable.

That's the book market in front of the American Book Center, isn't it? I've made some great finds there.

[pimpinett.livejournal.com]

I can imagine - it's only open until June or thereabouts too, isn't it?

I think so. Must have been, unless there are several different book markets. We just stumbled across it, I don't think I could point it out on a map. It was a great market, anyway.