Tulips in Amsterdam

 I retired last year, and we wanted to do a trip to celebrate. However, what I really wanted to do was to go and see the tulip fields in Holland. Since the season is so short: from late March to mid May, we had to wait almost a year. It was worth it though!

We booked in advance: flights, hotel, tickets for Keukenhof Gardens (transport included) and for good measure, tickets for the Rijksmuseum. 

What we couldn't book was the weather. Amsterdam has its fair share of rain, and the day of the gardens it rained. Not all the time, but we didn't get dazzled by the sun either. The flowers themselves did the dazzling. 

There were a lot of people there; probably thousands. It really is an amazing place!

At the entrance

It's got a windmill and lots of tourists

I could post more photos of tulips.

Tulip fields

These won't show up so well, but surrounding the gardens are the fields; blocks of colour.

They let the tulips bloom then cut the flowers off son the strength goes into the bulb, which multiplies and grows bigger. We saw them from the plane on the way in but too far away to show much on a photo.

The best place to photograph the tulip fields is from the platform of the windmill, but there was a queue to go up when we came off the boat trip so we didn't bother; after 40 minutes on the canal we were a bit chilly and headed off to one of the pavilions to get coffee and Dutch apple pie (delicious)

More and more flowers!

And so on. More and more flowers, more and more tourists taking photos of flowers and/or self with flowers. It reminded me of Stonehenge; conpletely unique, completely overrun with tourists. I'm not complaining about the tourists, they are part of the show really. An amazing experience all round.

Flowers

Oloron Sainte Marie is only about an hour away from Jaca. They're good at flowers. Here's a footbridge:

Midsummer in the mountains

We haven't had time to go to the mountains recently. Or if there was time the weather was bad. Today, however it was hot in Jaca so we drove over the border with France and stopped at the cross-country ski resort of Le Somport and went for a walk along the tracks where people ski in the winter. Sheltered by trees and lined with wild flowers it was perfect for a hot afternoon.

Here are some of the flowers we saw. In the open it was very windy, but not a bit cold. On the way back to the car we sat down for a moment, without talking,  and suddenly there was a roe deer on the path ahead of us. There was an instant before it noticed us, and then it bounded up the hillside into the trees; we could still see it now and then because we knew it was there. I'm sure it's not rare, but what a treat! This is a snippet of video; the wind makes a terrible noise!