Spring! Time for the famous Dutch tulips at the Koiken hoof

No, it's not pronounced Koiken hoof, nor zie Kitchen hofe. (a kitchen is a keuken in Dutch, a hof is a garden).
It's Keu-ken-hof. Ask your Dutch parents / friends how to pronounce it.

Anyway, near the Hague, up north behind the North Sea dunes is the famous Keukenhof: a park full of Dutch flowers: narcisses, hyacinths and first and foremost our famous tulips. Open two months a year and we decided to visit it on the first day of Pentecost.

For us it's reliving our very early youth. The place, and especially the amount of flowers is amazing. All the colours, it is absolutely a sight for sore eyes!

Apart from the flowers we took pictures of people who were taking pictures of each other.
Enjoy!

Healthy springs: Germany's famous Spas.

Germany is riddled with wholesome, healthy, healing, medicinal springs. They're called 'Bad': bathes, or spas.
Whenever you go to a place with 'Bad' in it you'll be sure to see a massive,Victorian, palatial building, a true Spa Hotel, near the springs: mineral waters, sulphur, special muds, the works. These towns and villages invariably have an international, glam life feel and thus are great to stroll through and spend the night.

So check out our pics of Bad Nenndorf, in the Schaumberger Land, west of Hannover.
We stayed in the Grand Hotel Esplanade, a palace more impressive than the palace our former queen Beatrix grew up in. With, next to the immense garden, one of the strongest sulphur springs in Germany.

Now I love the smell of sulphur - memories of earlier life, and my next destiny, as my dear hubby keeps telling me. A whaft of sulphur might once in a while enter our rooms, we were forewarned in the hotel leaflet. But that was VERY healthy so no worries.

Great! love it! But then I woke up in the middle of the night, and found that every single particle of oxygen was taken up by sulphur molecules.
It was breathtaking.
It was, in fact, hardly breathable.
It smelled horrid, putrid, and very, very disgusting. No more Hell for me, thank you so very much.

We'll be back in Bad Nenndorf. When the wind is east.