Last Saturday it was ‘National Tulip Day’ in the Netherlands; the celebration of the start of the new tulip season. In the middle of winter, it was freezing cold but sunny, the Dutch celebrate a flower. Yes, that’s right. If you think about it it’s rather stupid, but I can assure you; it was good fun! Everyone; young, old, poor, rich, tourist or local Dutchie, was invited to pick their own tulips for free, from a specially constructed ‘picking garden’ at Amsterdam’s Dam Square. In the Netherlands, an estimated of 1.7 billion Dutch tulips are picked and sold to customers every year, in the Netherlands but also to businesses all over the world. It’s one of the biggest and best export items of the Dutch, together with cheese and stroopwafels, I guess. National Tulip Day sees Dutch tulip growers create a massive temporary garden on Dam Square, with around 200,000 tulips, to pick for free. I was there and today I will show you, in a photo report, how it was. Don’t forget to scroll down to see how beautiful the tulips look like on our kitchen table at home.
At 1.00pm the tulip feast started. More than 10,000 people came to pick their own tulips.
And this is what that looks like. It was crowded, but the atmosphere was good and everyone enjoyed it.
Tulips in beautiful colours everywhere.
The field of flowers with on the backdrop the famous ‘Palace on the Dam’, where the Royal Dutch Family often hosts special dinners, memorials and important meetings with other global leaders.
The tulip season is officially here!
Happy people.
Beautiful sunshine on a freezing cold day in the middle of winter.
And this is how the tulips look like on our own kitchen table. It cheers up the whole house. I love tulips! It’s such an happy flower.
*Note: I have not been asked, paid or invited to write about National Tulip Day on Dam Square in Amsterdam. It was my own idea to write a little article about it. All images are mine, made with a Canon EOS M3 camera.
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