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20140502 Friday Amsterdam

Vantage: Amsterdam (Keukenhof Gardens)
This morning, consider joining an optional visit to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction (select departures only). Prepare to be amazed by the most stunning of Dutch gardens, located just outside Amsterdam. Keukenhof Gardens, the largest tulip fields in the Netherlands — and the world! — are the heart of Dutch flower production. You’ll have leisure time here, with lunch money to be provided. Later, if you like, take a guided walk through Amsterdam’s famous “Red Light District.”Celebrate the finale of your cruise with live entertainment on board.

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Actual: .... Cold, cloudy, windy, bleeping miserable weather day.

What a day!! Up at 0530, bus at 0700 to the flower market and auction at Aalsmeer. This is a *huge* operation. Somebody mentioned 20 football fields, but it has to be bigger than that. Think of tremendous warehouses and refrigerating rooms. Flowers from all over the world are flown in, presented for auction, split into the various buyers, and shipped to them. Flowers flown in from Ecuador could be flown back to Ecaudor later in the day they arrived.

It looks like the receiving end is fairly straight forward - put the big shipment onto trolley(s) carts and give them a computer tag, then the computer takes them into the refrigerators. When the auction starts, the computer brings the trolleys through the auction room, where buyers compete (using laptops connected to the main computer) to buy them at a good price (the clock starts with a high price and goes down; when a buyer thinks he’ll take it at that price, he hits his computer “buy” button and takes it, or some part of it). The trolleys are moved into the winning buyer’s area with his other purchases by a fleet of little tractors on which the operator stands - they scurry all over the “bought” side of the place in semi-organized chaos. At the end of the auction, each buyer’s flowers are moved into his trucks and he ships them to wherever he can sell them. Millions of flowers are moved every open day (M-F).

If you can imagine the above, consider that this operation is only one of five such operations in the country, but it is the largest. The Netherlands is the undisputed major flower market in the world.

Link to notes on Aalsmeer’s bidder’s board. Link to Aalsmeer’s statistics.

Then, having walked a half-mile, we boarded the bus and went to Keukenhof flower gardens.

Keukenhof is an 80-acre arrangement of flowers in an almost-natural landscape. Flowers everywhere, mainly tulips and irises, but some of everything you can think of. If it wasn’t outside in a flower bed, it was inside in an exhibit in one of the six enclosed places. Also in these enclosed places are souvenirs and eateries and toilets and art-for-sale. There are a couple of little lakes with swans and ducks that the flowers can be shown against.

Dolores being a flower person went nuts and shot 343 pictures today, between the auction and Keukenhof. We also bought a DVD so we have some good photos in addition to our amateur ones.

People. All over the place, people. This is supposed to be the busiest day of the year at Keukenhof, and I believe it was. We saw tour buses from Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, and a couple I couldn’t figure out (what’s “LV”? [Ed. LV=Latvia]).

Cold. Wind blew the chill through the park and through us. The temperature was 10*C or about 50*F, and the wind chill factor made it worse. We’ve been back at the ship for two hours and I’ve had two glasses of wine, and I’m still cold.

We walked the place from 1000 until 1330, looking at everything. We took a lunch break in the pavilion called Julianna where D had a schnitzel & noodles and I had a German meatball with mashed & red cabbage. And merlot.

The early part of the day was supposed to work like this. Bus 1 & 2 to Aalsmeer for the auction at 0700. Bus 3 for those not going to Aalsmeer goes to Keukenhof at 0900. At 1330, they start loading the buses with whomever wants to go at that time. At 1400, another bus is to come back. At 1430, the final bus is to come back. BUT, at 1330 the whole damn mob was ready to get in the buses and come to the ship. I know two buses left then, because we were on one. I think the third came along shorty afterward when everyone had been counted.

We were all very happy to see the ship. They had hot towels and hot tea waiting for us. We went to the room. Dolores then went up for a cup of cocoa while I opened our cabin bottle of Italian wine from Puglia. We had a glass, then Dolores snuggled into bed for a warming nap. Actually, she did very well walking today over what must have been a couple of miles. If her leg doesn’t fall off tonight, I’ll think she’s recovering.

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