Two Amsterdam Days of Art and Tulips

Two days in Amsterdam, staying out in Badhoevedorp, and this one carried most of the weight: canals in the morning, the Rijksmuseum after, tulips in the afternoon.

First a walk along the Amstel, stopping on one of the old bridges with the stone balusters, houseboats tied up along the far bank and a drawbridge arm painted red and white overhead. Then the Rijksmuseum, where the Night Watch has its own wall and a steady crowd in front of it. Off to one side you can look down into the research library from a balcony — book galleries stacked four deep around an open well, iron railings, a skylight over all of it.

From there, out of the city to Keukenhof in Lisse, the big garden in the Bollenstreek, the bulb region between Haarlem and Leiden. Early April runs a little ahead of the peak — mid-April is when the fields really go — so a lot of the color was in the pavilions, tulips in beds by the thousand under glass. Signs everywhere about staying out of the plantings, since walking through wrecks the bulbs. One of the girls came away with a handful of wooden tulips from the shop, which at least will survive the flight home.