A fortnight after our skiing trip, we were off again, and this time to ride through the tulip fields in the Netherlands. Like many of my travel ideas, this was something I wanted do ever since I saw it on one of the Oz travel shows. 
We haven’t been to Amsterdam since our first time, during our honeymoon. Joe recognised the central station immediately, not much has changed in the 5.5 years or so. We walked through the streets and stopping at local markets and trying the local feed… needless to say, the croissants (French influence) and the sausage rolls (German influence) they did very well. After we settled into out hotel, we took to the streets, after admiring the canals, we soon discovered, all the canals looked the same, so we took it pretty easy, just wandering the streets and soaking up the atmosphere.
The line for Anne Frank’s house was so long, luckily we booked our tickets online, so we skipped the queue. The museum itself (the house Anne lived in) didn’t have much as most things were destroyed once they were found, however it did leave a dampening feeling as you creep through the area that was occupied by the family. We all felt we had to whisper, as if we also had to be very quiet. Anne's room was quite small and I enjoyed seeing all the pictures she decorated the wall with. Although I always knew Anne was always a real person, it just really hit me that all the horrible things that happened weren’t so long ago. It made me think the human race can be so cruel. I left with an appreciation of how this little girl’s diary has touched the hearts of so many around the world.
We awoke to a glorious Sunday morning, as we packed up and got ready to make our way to the Keukenhof garden, the largest tulip festival in the world. The tulip festival is a huge tourist attraction, there were people everywhere! It’s actually very similar to the Floriade in Canberra, however spread over a larger area. After looking at the millions of flowers, we hired our bikes to explore the tulip fields. We rode along the fields which resembled carpets of colours. Most of the flowers are grown for their bulbs, as apposed to the flowers for the florist. We had a great time; even we took a wrong turn and ended up at the beach! We rode like mad to get the bikes back to the shop and catch one of the last bus back to the airport.
As we climbed into bed, exhausted after our ride, and flight back to London, I was happy I got to cross off “riding through the tulip fields” on my “things I must do” list.
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