flower power

April 20, 2014

Today our main goal was to get some laundry done and to see tulips. After breakfast we again gathered our laundry and headed out towards a couple of Laundromats Ben had found nearby. The first one was closed. In fact everything was closed, so I didn’t feel very optimistic about our second choice. However once we got there it was the only business that was open! This was possibly more exciting than it should be but I really wanted some fresh clothes. So we threw everything into the wash and went for a walk up and down the nearby streets and peered into shop windows.

Once our laundry was finished (we only put it in the dryer for about 10 minutes since they have drying racks at the cabins and we didn’t want to waste any more time on laundry), we continued to head towards Lisse along the backroads in the hope that we would see fields and fields of tulips in bloom. What we say were fields and fields of cows and sheep. We also drove through a section of farmland that had so many bugs that as they hit the windshield it sounded like it was raining because there were so many.

It wasn’t until we got right into Lisse that FINALLY we spotted some tulip fields. I was starting to think we weren’t going to find any and that our whole backroads drive was for nothing (although it was really nice driving through the smaller towns. We drove through Haarlem and Peggy told us all about Corrie Ten Boom.) So anyways, we found the tulips and took a wander through the fields and took lots of pictures. They were so beautiful and colourful.

By the time we found the tulips it was just after 1pm and we needed to be back at the cabins by 2pm because Peggy was going with Oma and everyone to visit a friend of Oma’s that she’s known since elementary school! So we booked it back to Doorn on the highway.

Earlier in the day Rick and Nora went to the airport to pick up Jonathan, Jessica & Ryan, so they were at the cabins when we got back. Of course they were super tired so Jonathan went right to bed but Jessica and Ryan came over to our cabin for a visit before they crashed and went for naps.

Ben and I had a nice quiet afternoon to ourselves. We were reading, Ben had time to check all his car websites, I fell asleep for a little while on the couch…it was really nice. It was actually a really nice warm afternoon, so we decided to go for a walk. Ben showed me a mini-golf course that the resort is building; it was super weird and really small (Ben called it micro-golf). From there we just followed some random trails through the forest and came across a field full of horses. Ben tried to call them over but they obviously didn’t speak English so they didn’t respond. We didn’t bring a GPS or anything with us and it was late afternoon, so we decided to start heading back in the direction we came. We found the bike path and followed that all the way back to our area of the resort.

By the time we got back we were hungry, and we figured that the other guys must be finished their nap so we went over to find food. We ended up making everyone grilled cheese sandwiches and just hanging out until everyone else got home.