Keukenhof gardens

These are the notes from the trip my wife and I did between March and April of 2016.

The Keukenhof gardens is a large location with tons of flowers, primarily tulips. The place is gorgeous and quite famous.

Tupils!

Before I get ahead of myself I should remind you that at least the tulip portion of the Keukenhof gardens and park (they seem to call them both ways) are only open for a few weeks a year, usually between March and May.
You would probably want to check the dates on their website before you get all excited to go.

Also, I'm not into flowers or plants of any kind so I won't be able to provide you with specific information about what we saw. There were tons of tulips, and several other flowers.
That's as far as I know about plants.

One last thing. I have massive allergies to pollen, dust, and pretty much anything that grows from the ground.
I don't know if it was the fact that it had been raining the previous week, but my allergies did not affect me at the park (or anywhere in Holland). No issues indoors or outdoors. No allergy pills needed!

Getting there

The Keukenhof park is about 20 km (about 12.5 miles) from Amsterdam's Schipol airport, right outside the town of Lisse.
You can drive there, and there is plenty of parking.

We didn't drive, but instead we took the "Keukenhof express" bus (line 858) from Schipol airport. The bus stop of the Keukenhof express at Schipol is outside, on the far northeast corner of the airport, after the car rental places (the right-hand side of the airport, from inside of the airport).
The bus is advertised as coming "every 15 minutes" but in reality is closer to 30 minutes, or more. When we went they only had 2 buses running, so one showed up at 8:00am, and the second one showed up at 8:10am...just 10 minutes apart.
However, the third bus showed up at 9:00am and the fourth at 9:10. This means there were really only 2 buses per hour.
The buses are filled to capacity with people standing up.

If you take this bus make sure you show up early. The line to get on the bus can be really long. We got lucky to only have to wait for the 3rd bus. Some people had to wait for 5.

The bus leaves you right at the door of the Keukenhof park.

On the way back, you can take the same bus back to Schipol every 30 minutes.
The last bus left at 7:30pm, although we were told they run until 8:00pm.

What to do at the gardens

The place itself is huge! Just like at Disneyland, you grab a map and start walking at your own pace in whatever direction you want. You should probably plan at least 5 hours for this place.

Tulips at Keukenhof

We didn't see anyone riding bikes inside, so I would assume bikes are not allowed within the park.

There are outdoor and indoor sections. The outdoor areas have plants (flowers and tulips). The largest indoor place is a green house, museum and restaurant. There are also several other museums around.
The museums provide information related to how tulips arrived in The Netherlands, why they are the national flower (they are, right?), how many tulips are exported each year, etc...

The outdoors have just plants, ponds, bridges, gift and snack shops, a working (spinning) windmill and some large wooden shoes.
You can walk into the windmill, and take pictures being inside the wooden shoes.

Keukenhof's windmill

Finally, right behind the windmill you can see a large area of tulip being grown. I don't know if this is part of the Keukenhof park itself, but you can certainly see it from within the park.

Tulip fields behind the windmill at Keukenhof

That's about it. I know it sounds kind of lame, and me not really being into plants might make it even less exciting, but the truth is that the place is just gorgeous without any special artificial attraction.
You just see tons of colors made up by flowers, grass and water.

Don't forget to get some poffertjes!

There will be tourists

Like I mentioned before, this place is very popular so you should be prepared to find masses of tourist of all nations taking pictures at every single type of flower they find. And there are tons of flowers!

Also, unlike Disneyland, this place allows selfie sticks. I'll just leave it at that.

We got lucky though. We went on a Thursday (their least busiest day, according to their website), took the 9:00am bus from Schipol to Keukenhof to arrive at like 9:30am in a bus full of other tourists.
The day we went rained most of the morning. We initially hated the rain but we soon realized that the place was actually not as crowded as we've seen in pictures.
The rain stopped at like noon, and the place got pretty busy by like 1pm.
We can only assume the rain kept most people away from the park for the morning.

Riding bikes outside the park

While bikes may not be allowed inside the park, you can rent a bike on the far left side of the parking lot and ride around the park, and within the town of Lisse at your heart's content.

We rented a bike from these guys, and I believe it was €10 per day per bike.
They gave us a map with 3 possible trails to ride on, but they didn't really care where we went as long as we brought the bikes back by 7pm.

Out of all the trails, we took the longest trail. We got lost and ended up in the "wrong place" but we somehow made it back to the park in time.

We saw tons of (absolutely stunningly beautiful) tulip fields, some sand dunes, deer and very large bunnies, a small portion of the town of Lisse, and even some middle of nowhere "beach town."

Tulip fields

Obviously European house in Lisse

At the freezing cold "beach town." They had ice cream sandwiches...

I honestly don't know what made this 2 hour bike ride so special that made us love it so much. It might've been the endless tulip fields, the beautiful European houses along the ride, or just the fact that we were riding dutch bikes on our own in what seemed to be the countryside of The Netherlands.

Either way, doing a bike ride outside Keukenhof is in my list of must do the next time we go there. (not sure about the sand dunes though)