KEUKENHOF: The Tulip Garden of the World

THIS POSTING IS ANOTHER OF MY EXPERIMENTAL FORAYS NECESSITATED BY MY TRAVEL SCHEDULE. Here is my problem.

A Tauck Tulip cruise on the Espirit is filled with too many things to do that I can't find time to do my blog.
Today, I will merely provide a bunch of photos, and later come back to make some sense of my day,

Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands, is the ultimate tulip garden of the world, and among the most fabulous of any floral park anywhere. I have rarely been so impressed about anything of this nature in my life.

Covers 79 acres with 7 million flower bulbs.
Keukenhof is only open to the general public for 8 weeks during the tulip season, which is mid-March to mid-May. Mid-April is best, and yes, it was incredible.
One comparison is that the Rijksmuseum, which I visited yesterday, receives an average of 8,000 visitors/day. Keukenhof does 26,000/day.
Created by Adriaen Block, governor of the Dutch East India Company in 1641.
Restructured in 1857.
However, the park, as it now known, was only established in 1949 by tulip growers to showcase their products.
100 growers annually donate 7 million bulbs, which are planted by 40 gardeners. The bloom comes in 3 weeks

So for now, I will provide photos to be reorganized someday. The first photo was breakfast.

Lunch ar Keukenhof.

Returned to our ship at 3:30PM and had nachos, a hamburger, margarita and beer in my room so that I could crank out this posting.

Will now need to leave for another outing at 6PM involving a special museum showing followed by dinner at a private club. Will not return until close to midnight. Walked 7832 steps at Keukenhof and 1632 at night, or 9455 for the day.

These photos above represent around half of what was taken and could be downloaded. At home, one photo takes a couple seconds. On this ship, many tens of seconds/photo. So I'll need to later decide which of the above will be deleted, add more photos as necessary, place them in some organizational order, and provide some explanation of what you're seeing. I'll also correct the typos.

Aloha for now.

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