Author: Spencer C

We drove from Amsterdam to Paris on 13 April. It wasn’t a bad trip. Even the larger roads have reasonable scenery. It’s fairly monotonous, so there’s at least that. There is a toll along the way. Total cost was 20 euro. Gas is expensive. And if you’re renting a car, check the rental agreement. Most car rentals have mileage limits that you will easily hit if you use the car to explore the region. My rental contract is 1 euro/km. I’m guessing that I will be about 500km over the allowed amount.

We visited Keukenhof gardens on 11 April 2025. There were close to one million people there (I think). We left Noorjik at 9:15 and it took a full hour until we were inside the park. Noorjik is only a few miles away, but there was heavy traffic and a good walk from the parking lot to the park. There are lots of options for food at the park, i.e. hamburgers, apple pie, strawberries and cream, etc. All priced one euro or so higher than you would find outside of the park, which was a pleasant surprise. I’m still used to paying double or triple the price for anything in the US when its in a premium location, but in The Netherlands the premium seems to be only a euro or two, at the most. A reasonable number of bathrooms, including one at the entrance. The park is not large. It wasn’t too difficult to find a seat when we needed to rest our feet. The Whisper Boat tour was really neat, although I’m not sure why I enjoyed it so much. The Whisper Boat tour is for fields outside of Keukenhof, not inside of Keukenhof. This day was mostly for my wife, but I think that I enjoyed myself almost as much as she did.

This morning we visited the Kroller-Mueller museum. It’s inside the De Hoge Veluwe National Park. You need to buy tickets to the De Hoge National Park for each person and for the vehicle. You also need to buy tickets to the Kroller-Mueller museum. You can park outside of the De Hoge National Park and ride a bicycle to the museum, but it will be about 10 kilometers. There are bikes for rent at the entrance. They had about 25 Van Gogh’s on display. There are lots of benches inside the museum and a great cafe outside the museum in the sculpture garden. This was a great art museum and reminded me of Crystal Bridges in Arkansas (USA) because of it’s natural setting and the way that the architect tried to bend the building into the natural environment. Be sure to go to the cafe outside in the sculpture garden. There is a cafe inside the museum, but they were only offering one item on the day that we visited.

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