Visiting Keukenhof from Amsterdam
So many tulips, so little time
Located in Lisse, Keukenhof is a seasonal garden that is home to millions of the most quintessentially Dutch flower: the tulip. Beautifully landscaped, it is a sight to behold, and at only 40 km from Amsterdam, it makes for an easy day trip from the city. During a recent trip to the Netherlands, my husband and I had the chance to visit Keukenhof, and what follows is an overview of our time at the gardens, including how we got there and what we did while there.
Morning: Travel to Keukenhof from Amsterdam
After a rushed breakfast of instant oatmeal in our hotel room, we set off later than intended at 10:15am for Keukenhof. We had booked timed tickets with an entry of 11:30am to 12:00pm, so we knew that we would have to hustle if we were to make our reservation. With this in mind, we opted to take the metro to Centraal Station rather than walk, which had been our original plan. Once at Centraal, we purchased a roundtrip train ticket to Schiphol Airport from one of the self-service kiosks located near the station’s entrance.
Train platform inside Centraal Station
Unfortunately, Lady Luck was not looking down upon us, for when we made it to the train platform, we saw that we had just missed the train to Schiphol and would have to wait 20 minutes for the next one. This delay meant that by the time we arrived at Schiphol, we only had a little over 30 minutes to make it to Keukenhof before we missed our reservation. We had planned on buying tickets at the airport for the 858 bus to Keukenhof, but with scant time to spare, this was no longer an option. So, we begrudgingly hailed an Uber and paid €38 for the 20-minute ride to Keukenhof. We arrived at the gardens with a whopping four minutes to spare.
The entrance to Keukenhof
If you are reading this post and are planning a trip to Keukenhof, learn from our mistake and allow yourself more travel time to the gardens. I would also recommend looking into the combi ticket; it includes both admission to Keukenhof and transportation to and from the gardens via bus.
Colorful tulips near the entrance
Afternoon: Amble through Tulips and Take Lots and Lots of Photos
Upon entering Keukenhof, we were immediately greeted by a colorful display of tulips, and as magnificent as it was, it was but a prelude to what was to come. We made our way through several beautiful gardens replete with fountains, sculptures, and artfully arranged flowers before reaching the first visitor center, the so-called Juliana/Tulpomania building. There, we grabbed a couple of much-needed coffees, as well as blueberry muffins to hold us over until lunch.
One of the many beautifully manicured gardens inside Keukenhof
We spent the next hour exploring breathtaking garden after garden (and taking an obscene number of photos) as we made our way to the Wilhelmina building for lunch. Accustomed to the rather lackluster nature of visitor centers in America, I was caught off guard by how nice this one was. It was clean, spacious, and featured an array of food options, including several vegetarian ones. I settled on a quinoa salad and found it to be quite good.
My surprisingly good lunch
Sated, we resumed our exploration of the gardens. It had started to rain while we were having our lunch, but fortunately, we had checked the forecast that morning and had brought our umbrella. Under its shelter, we continued to meander through the gardens for the next couple of hours.
Seemingly never-ending rows of tulips
Eventually, it stopped raining, and we grabbed ourselves a mid-afternoon snack of hand-cut, Belgian fries from a food truck. The fries were as tasty as they looked, and it did not take us long to scarf them down.
Fresh-from-the-fryer, hand-cut fries
We saw several more gardens, as well as adjacent commercial tulip fields, before leaving Keukenhof. We also popped into one of the gift shops to buy several souvenirs to take home to our families.
One of the tulip fields adjacent to Keukenhof
As we were not racing against the clock like we had been that morning, we were able to take the bus back to Amsterdam, which saved us a bit of money. Given that we had purchased return tickets to Amsterdam Centraal from Schiphol Airport earlier that day, we took the 858 bus to Schiphol. We arrived in Schiphol approximately 30 minutes after leaving Keukenhof.
Helpful tidbit — The bus stop at Keukenhof is located to the right of the main entrance (exit via the main entrance, turn right, and walk until you see queues of people and signs for the various buses). If you do not already have a bus ticket (i.e., you did not purchase a combi ticket), you can buy a ticket at the bus stop via a QR code, which is what we had to do.
Once at Schiphol, we headed inside and made our way to the train platforms. There, we boarded our train to Centraal Station, and from Centraal, we hopped on the subway for one stop to reach our hotel.
The subway platform in Centraal
By the time we returned to our hotel, it was a little past 5:00pm; nearly seven hours had passed since we had set out for our day of tulip sightseeing. In spite of the crowds at Keukenhof, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time there and would heartily recommend it to anyone visiting the Netherlands during the spring.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below!
