Time for another of my “time travel” posts! In 1989 I made a short trip to Holland to visit the Keukenhof Gardens, while they were in full spring bloom. Keukenhof meaning “kitchen garden” – well the kitchen herbs are long gone, and replaced with about 7 million tulip bulbs! I wonder who counts them.
I arrived in Holland at Vlissingen, and proceeded by road to Keukenhof which is in the Lisse area of Holland, I keep saying Holland but I should say Netherlands I guess. It opened to the public in 1950, when I visited the entrance was as per the photo below – click here to look at it now!!
The word Tulip is thought to come from the Persian word for Turban, and its therefore no surprise that the flower was originally a wild growing flower from Asia. The Dutch of course traded spices etc with the Turks and obviously at some point, Tulip bulbs too. Amazing to think that according to good old Wiki – “At the peak of tulip mania, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled artisan.”
All of these photographs were made on Kodak Gold, either 100 or 200. Remember the good old days of “Buy 2 get 1 free!” packs. They were processed by Kodak when kodak had their own processing business in the UK – KPC (Kodak Processing Companies).
Apart from the colour of Keukenhof, my other main memory of this short trip was the Hotel I stayed. I don’t ever remember receiving a warmer welcome! The room was great, and the breakfast terrific, but the family running it, were what made it special. Sadly I never recorder either the hotel or their names, I wish I had. The next time I visited the Netherlands started with an hour in the company of the police – but that’s another story!!!
S.H.O.U.T. 