God Did That For Me

The only place I remember my Grandmother, Honey, saying she wanted to travel to was Holland.  I offered to take her, but she always refused. She would talk about the tulips, windmills and wooden shoes.  Imagine my excitement when John told me there were samples to be collected on the Dutch coast.   I looked forward to this particular research trip with much excitement and a great deal of nostalgia.  I miss my grandmother, Irene, terribly.  And so I knew on our first day in Holland that God did this for me........

 

I was admiring all of the beautiful boats along the canal on the way to our first collection point when I saw a boat named "Irene."  When John turned the car around to get a picture we both noticed that in the background there was a beautiful field of tulips, an old windmill and even a more modern windmill.  Thank you, God.  That was beautiful.

These are some pictures from our boat tour in Amsterdam.  A lot of our pictures are of the masses of people who had gathered to celebrate the Queen's birthday.  Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Queen would have no part of many of the day's festivities. 

On our last day we decided to drive to Keuckenhof Gardens to see if we could get some better pictures of tulips.  We found this cute little field on the side of the road in Lisse.  We couldn't properly capture the beauty of millions of tulips.  The colors are more brilliant than anything I have ever seen.  It is beautiful.  This year the season was from late March to mid May.  We're hoping to see some of you here next Spring for the tulips.

 

In Lisse, we saw a guy selling tulips and other flowers at a roadside stand.  We bought forty tulips for five euro.  That is about $6.35.  The tulips made it all the way back to Germany and bloomed a few days later into the biggest, most beautiful tulips.  The second picture shows about a fourth of the whole bunch.  We didn't have a container large enough to hold them all.