An absolute "must see"! Located in Lisse (a couple...

An absolute "must see"! Located in Lisse (a couple of train stops and a 30-minute bus ride from Amsterdam), the Keukenhof will leave you wanting a tulip garden of your own.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, varieties of tulips, photos ops and other bulbs on display. There was also an orchid exhibit when I visited in April 2011. The weather was unseasonably warm, so many of the tulips were open and looked like roses.

You cannot step on most of the grassy areas (the grass police caught me) and the food they sell at the gardens is expensive. I recommend you pack your own lunch and have a picnic if you are pinching pennies. The cost for a map of the park and informational brochure is 1.50-euros. There are no free informational materials at the gardens.

I went on Easter Sunday, which is supposedly the busiest day of the year at Kuekenhof. I recommend visiting the week before or the week after Holy Week, on a weekday, so there aren't so many crowds.

A bonus of visiting the Keukenhof is the ride there, where you get to see multiple fields of tulips. The bus ride back to the train station took a scenic route past some fields accented with Dutch residents riding bikes and some guy running around in a tank top and really short shorts.

If you book a wheelchair in advance, they will save a motorized chair for you. If not, you get a regular wheelchair that you cannot control on your own (someone else has to push you). The deposit on a chair is 10-euros, which you get back when you turn the chair back into to the office.

Keukenhof is pronounced by the locals, "koh-ken-hof."