brace yourself for a lot more pictures of tulips 😉

while i loved experiencing the flowers at keukenhof, i loved even more experiencing the flowers growing wildly in the dutch countryside. the tulip fields (and the hyacinth and daffodil fields!) in holland are truly mind-boggling. seemingly endless colourful flowers is basically my idea of heaven.

we thoroughly explored the flower fields, and also got to spend some time at the beach (you never think of the beach when you think of the netherlands, right?? but the airbnb we stayed at was right by the sea and we all four loved spending some time in the sand and waves!). we finished off our trip with an afternoon in amsterdam (such a fantastic and unique city).

our first mode of exploration was biking. we thought it was a brilliant idea to plan our bike ride around nap time and have the boys sleep in the trailer.

at first that worked out really great…
 
…but then the boys woke up and baby gabriel was not happy to be strapped into that thing. after a little snack break, the journey back to the bike rental place was full of incredibly beautiful sights and delightful smells … and a lot of eleven-month-old screaming. poor guy!

the next day we opted for using the car as our means of transportation 😉 it was fun to drive around on a treasure hunt for the best fields, and then get out to explore and snap photos.



this is the best we did on a photo of both boys together, haha:
  

the smell of these fields packed full of hyacinths was just to die for!



 
we spent that evening at the beach!:
 
and the next morning i headed out on a training run, and couldn’t have asked for better scenery!

 
 
 
 
a few more shots from our flower field treasure hunt:
 
loved seeing this different phase of the tulip life cycle…rows fulll of fallen petals.


both ian and i had been to amsterdam before, but never together! he has had several work trips there over the past few years, and i met a girlfriend there for a weekend when i was pregnant with moses. it was fun to experience the city together (and i’d never seen it with leaves on the trees, which seems to change everything!). we just had a couple of hours before we needed to go to the airport, so we took a quick canal cruise, ate some pancakes and stroopwafels, and then just wandered around those cute, quirky streets.
 
 
 

it was an amazing few days in holland! we lucked out with amazing weather and peak tulip bloom. all expectations exceeded 🙂