Mom & Dad visit: Keukenhof Gardens

Everything in the Netherlands in pretty close together as the country is not huge. So I was able to pack a lot into one day for us on Easter. Are next stop was Keukenhof Garden to admire all the pretty flowers! For it being a weekend and holiday the garden really wasn't too crowded while we were there. The entrance seemed to be crowded but once you made it past that and more into the garden it wasn't too bad really. The gardens are only open for about a month so I imagine it is almost always a little crowded. I didn't think it hindered the picture taking or viewing of flowers at all.

They do amazing designs with they flowers and have a mixture of different types of flowers in a lot of their designs. The above is there famous "river" design. The gardens also have a different theme each year. This years theme was Holland. So for there main display (below) they made an Amsterdam street line out of flowers. It was very cool and I could only get part of it in the picture because it was so big. 

The kids enjoyed smelling all the different flowers. They do this thing where they smell the flowers and then fake sneeze. I'm not sure where they got it but I'm sure from a cartoon!

They also had a petting zoo for the kids which was nice. My kids love animals and are used to being close to ones at the farm. They had momma sheep with their babies which we so cute.

The gardens have an amazing design and set up. The flow is nice but not everyone has to go in the same direction. They had several photo opportunities set up through out the garden which was really nice. The kids loved this giant wooden shoe. They also had the boat set up pictured below. They also had big wooden shoes you could put your feet in and take pictures. They kids loved all of that interactive stuff. 

Another really cool thing they offered was these lily pads. You could jump from wooden disc to wooden disc along a path and get a picture of the fountain in the back. The jumps were a little too big for the kids so we had to help them. Harper could almost make it with a little help from my mom. Well one time Harper decided not to really jump and my mom only had a hold of one hand so her foot slipped into the water. She wasn't very happy but it was a beautiful day so they dried quickly. 

 We also had lunch in the gardens. They had several restaurant places and concession type things but I really have started to enjoy eating at food carts. They seem to serve more regional food. We had a croquette and waffles from the carts. The croquette was delicious. I'm not really sure what the filling was as it can vary but it seems to have a gravy type texture. The kids even liked it and especially liked the waffle which were more dense they ones I make and were sweeter too.

We ended up staying at the gardens for about 3 1/2 hours. We probably could of stayed longer because I am sure we didn't see everything but it was enough time to enjoy most of it and get our money worth. The kids and the guys were ready to be done by the time we left. My dad made the comment that all the flowers were starting to look the same! I think most people probably spent 4-5 hours there.