Holland 3: Keukenhof

Really popular tourist attractions always seem like a great idea until you remember that they're really popular tourist attractions.


In Holland, the most popular tourist attraction (outside of Amsterdam, I guess) is Keukenhof. Keukenhof, the world's largest flower garden (my sources tell me seven million flower bulbs are planted there each year) (my sources are Wikipedia), is only open for two months of the year and the best place to see famous Holland tulips. It's also home to the largest collection of foreign tourists in Holland, boasting approximately 20 loud tour buses per day. Its fanny pack exhibit rivals that of Disney World's. And the organ... the organ is in a class of its own.

When we walked in, this authentic Dutch organ was playing mood music. After a few seconds of careful listening, I turned to Y. 



"Is that..." I paused, trying to think of the name of the song. Was it something I remembered from childhood? Maybe a traditional Dutch folk song? The lyrics came to me as the organ started playing the chorus. 


"Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?"


Y looked at me in horror. He hates cheesy touristy things, and although I had warned him that Keukenhof might be full of tourists, he was not prepared for an organ playing a song from Grease.


Scratch that, friends. The organ was not playing a song from Grease, we soon found out. The organ was playing the entire Grease megamix. The same medley you might hear at a Bar Mitzvah party just after the chicken dance.


It was silly, and we would have rather stumbled across a field of tulips on our own than paid 20ish euro to walk around Tulip Disneyland. But we didn't let that stop us from enjoying Keukenhof, which really was beautiful. We just made sure to do the hand jive the entire time. 

Y's favorite part was talking to this Keukenhof worker about windmills. This guy was legit: not only was he wearing clogs, his mother was born in a windmill and I'm pretty sure he had a "van der" in his last name.