Netherlands Keukenhof Day Trip

Who doesn’t love flowers in springtime?! So when my bestie happened to mention wanting to see the Keukenhof tulips, I thought why not? It’s an hour’s flight from England and I’d never been to the Netherlands before.

We originally had looked at staying for the weekend, but with it being tulip season over there all the accommodation prices go up during that time. So instead of missing the chance to see the tulips or waiting until next year, we took a chance and flew there and back in one day. We did book our flights about 6 weeks out.

Our Keukenhof Day Trip

A Keukenhof day trip, as Keukenhof Gardens, are only open for 8 weeks out of the year.

The gardens are open from mid-March to mid-May. Opening times are 8 am till 7.30 pm. The best time to go is the beginning of April to see the full glory of the tulip gardens.

We ended up going the last weekend of April, on the Saturday. It also happened to be Kings Day over there. We had no idea until we were going through passport security when the officer who checked my passport told me.

It’s a national holiday in the Netherlands celebrating their King. Everyone wears the color orange in celebration and there are a lot of parties! (If you want to avoid even more crowds avoid this date for your trip. Also going on a weekday helps).

All in all, it was pretty easy to get around. We landed at Schiphol Airport early morning and we had already pre-booked our tickets for the Keukenhof Gardens online.

All we had to do was come out of the airport and walk round the corner the 854 bus stop and show them the tickets to get on. From the airport to Keukenhof takes around 30 minutes and that’s it!

You get to see the amazing stretches of tulip fields along the journey and the bus drops you right to the front of the gardens. The ticket we purchased included the bus and entry fee to the gardens. If you want to go to the tulip fields, that’s another cost to add on. 

Inside Keukenhof Gardens

Keukenhof Gardens is a huge place and you can easily spend the whole day there. There is a little map you can get on arrival to plan your way around. It’s beautiful and there’s lots to see. The color arrangements and the different varieties of tulips are incredible.

There’s a park for the children too and plenty of places inside the garden to sit down and eat. But it does get really busy and we had to scout out a table for a while until someone kindly gave up their seat once they had finished their meal. (It was lunchtime on a Saturday so that was to be expected). 

The best time to go is definitely early April. I could see a few of the tulip beds had been cut down to the stalks probably because they were past their best. But there are so many flowers around, that you barely notice them. There are also little indoor flower pavilions throughout the garden with amazing displays and setups inside. Lots more photo opportunities! 

Travel To Amsterdam

Like I said you can easily spend the whole day in the gardens if you like. It’s well worth a dedicated day. We got back on the bus from Keukenhof Gardens and jumped on the Amsterdam Metro to head into the city center, to have a wonder-round city and canals.

It didn’t take long and Centraal Station was where we got off. Because it was Kings Day it was packed but lots of fun. Just seas of people in orange! With lots of little boat parties floating down the canals.

We did look for somewhere to eat in the city but everywhere was full. So we ended up going back to the airport and checking through security and then eating. Which ended up being the best thing for us to do. By the time we’d finished eating it was only 30 minutes before boarding started and we didn’t have to stress about security.

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