Amsterdam; Thursday, 12 April, 2007

After a less than impressive breakfast (all that was left at 9am, with an hour of breakfast left, was a slice of cheese a piece of dried out ham and a couple of pieces of white bread), I headed to the central station and caught the train out to Leiden. From there I caught the bus to the small town of Lisse. The town itself is quite industrial and not massively interesting, what is on the edge of town is the real reason for coming.

Keukenhof is the worlds largest flower gardens, and this being the Netherlands, their main flowers are Tulips, millions of them. The park attracts over 800,000 visitors a year, good for any attraction, spectacular when you realise that it is only open for the 8 weeks or so that the tulips are in bloom. Surrounding the park, and possibly more impressive than the formal planting inside the park, are the acre upon acre of bulb fields. Row upon row of brightly coloured tulips in strips.

After looking around the park I hired a bike from the rental stall in the car park and cycled round some of the fields, the smell is overwhelming and the colour fantastic (though I would suspect those with Hay Fever may disagree!)

By late afternoon I caught the bus back to Leiden and the train back to Amsterdam. As it was such a lovely day, I then caught another train out Zandvoort aan Zee, the nearest seaside town to Amsterdam. The long sandy beach stretches for miles in each direction, and the only thing that stopped me from paddling was the knowledge that this is the North Sea, which in April, even on the hottest day, would still be almost freezing.

Having had a wander along the beach for a while I headed back into Amsterdam for dinner and then back to the hotel to pack.