Since there was a tulip picking event for kids in Lisse this weekend, I decided to take our little one there and visit some flower fields on the way back. Last year we went to see the tulip fields at the end of April and by then they were almost overblown. This year we were much earlier and some tulip varieties hadn’t even started to bloom. Most of them were in full bloom though and our little man loved it! He even wanted to take some pictures himself.

Best time to see the Dutch tulip fields

There are more bulb fields than just the tulip fields. As early as late January you can see the first crocuses. Then early spring it’s time for daffodils, narcissus, and hyacinths. And April to early May the tulip fields are in full bloom. If you want to see the tulips, by far the best month to visit the bulb fields and admire all this floral wonder is April.

Of course, the weather remains a deciding factor. If we had a mild winter, the flowers might bloom a bit early. If the winter was more extreme or temperatures stayed low in the first few months of the year, it might take some more time for the flowers to be in full bloom. To be sure though, don’t wait until the beginning of May. By then a lot of the flowers will be overblown. If you want to see where the flower fields are located and which are in full bloom check out the Flower Radar website.

Some fun facts about Dutch tulips

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• The biggest Dutch flower auctions generate an annual turnover of nearly $5 billion
• Holland bulbs are famous, each year approximately 1,7 billion flower bulbs find their way to homes all over the world
• In the Keukenhof over seven million flower bulbs are planted, with no less than 800 tulip varieties
• National Tulip Day was launched in 2012 by Tulip Promotion Netherlands (Tulpen Promotie Nederland or TPN) to promote the Dutch tulips
• Dutch tulip growers produce 4,32 bilion tulip bulbs per year, of which 53% are used for cut flowers
• The tulip isn’t a Dutch native flower, tulips are originally from the high plains of Central Asia

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Start of the tulip season with National Tulip Day in Amsterdam

The official start of the tulip season in The Netherlands is known as National Tulip Day (or ‘Nationale Tulpendag’ in Dutch). It’s held every year on the third Saturday in January. The Dam Square in Amsterdam is transformed into a giant temporary picking garden/cutting garden.

Around 200.000 tulips herald the start of the tulip season. Setting up the garden starts at 08:00 in the morning and it’s is open to the public from 13:00 til 16:30. And the best of all, picking your own bouquet of tulips is free!

Holland Tulip Festival

From early April to Mid May (in 2018 April 21-May 6) tulips dominate the city of Amsterdam for the Holland Tulip Festival (or ‘Tulp Festival’ in Dutch). Over 500.000 tulips can be admired at 60 locations in the city. You can buy an information guide that describes all the venues and tells you which tulips you can see in each location. On the Holland Tulip Festival website you’ll find an interactive map. The map also indicates which flowers are in bloom and which will be blooming soon. This is great time to visit The Netherlands. If you’ve never been to Amsterdam before then definitely check out this detailed Amsterdam accommodation guide to figure out the best area for you to stay.

Keukenhof gardens and Keukenhof Flower Festival

The Keukenhof is one of the most famous floral gardens in the world. It’s only open for 2 months per year (mid March to mid May) and attracts 700.000 visitors annually. The flower garden covers a surface of 32 hectares and has 15 km of walking paths. There are flower shows, inspirational gardens and various events. Kids are also very welcome too at the Keukenhof. There is a free children’s treasure hunt, a petting zoo, a maze and a playground.

We visited the Keukenhof in 2014 when we had some friends from Egypt visiting Holland. It was amazing, but if your kids are small, I don’t think you can get the full experience. There’s just too much to see and most kids aren’t known for their patience. To be honest, our toddler and I had just as much fun visiting the tulip fields this weekend. And that didn’t cost us anything.

Flower parade (Bloemencorso)

There are numerous flower parades in The Netherlands. A lot of them are held in September and the floats are decorated with dahlias. The Flower Parade in the bulb-growing area (‘Bloemencorso Bollenstreek’ in Dutch) is the only parade of this size that takes place in the Spring. It is also the only one that is made entirely with bulb flowers. The event is closely linked to the Keukenhof.

A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s actually a Flower Parade Week in this area of Holland. The 3 days before the actual parade, the 20 floats and 40 luxurious vehicles are decorated. You can visit the huge hall where this is done. The entrance fee is quite low and it’s very educational to see the decorators at work. The Bloemencorso Bollenstreek is always on a Saturday and the decorating takes place the Wednesday – Friday before. The Sunday after the parade, all the floats are exhibited in our hometown Haarlem, in the city center. You can find more information on the website of Bloemencorso Bollenstreek.

Tulip Museum Amsterdam

If you haven’t seen enough tulips, you can visit the Amsterdam Tulip Museum. Also, a great alternative if you’re visiting The Netherlands in Summer, Fall or Winter when the tulips aren’t in bloom. The Tulip Museum teaches you everything you want to know about the history of tulips. The museum is small and to enable visitors to see everything, only 25 people can visit at the same time. It’s housed in a historical canal-side house, so as a bonus you get to see one of these old houses from the inside.

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We need to come with a plan fairly soon, because simply ‘existing’ without any direction is not good enough anymore. Both of us feel like we’re biding our time and our lack of goals is driving me nuts. It’s really bad for my motivation. Our wanderlust is strong, and even more so after our long trip last year. I want to see more of the world! Just to be realistic, of course traveling with a young child isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It can be taxing too, but in a different way. Read more about what it’s really like to travel with an infant.

Our original plan won’t work right now

While traveling we came up with a beautiful plan. Mau would do his PADI IDC and become a dive instructor, while I would work as a digital nomad. We would slow travel around the world following the dive seasons, finding communities of like-minded people to stay for a while and homeschool our little one. Even more than our previous year of travel, we both feel very strongly that this is what we want to do. It combines our need to see and discover new places, with our wish to have some permanence so we can develop a routine and Jace will have friends to play with. Of course, now comes the big but…

Why we can’t (or won’t?) leave

The reason we came back early from our year of travel was my mother-in-law’s declining health (Parkinson’s). It has gotten to the point where she will go to a nursing house soon, because 24/7 care at home is not an option anymore. We’re not actively involved in her care, but Mau goes to see his parents at least once a week with Jace. It helps to lighten their mood considerably and gives some distraction from the difficult situation for a few hours. With all this going on, it simply isn’t an option anymore for us to leave long term. The question is though how long we can put our own lives on hold. Of course, the emotional strain on all of us isn’t making it any easier.

As long as our little one is happy…

You often hear parents say ‘as long as our child is happy, we are too’. And this is true to a certain point. But it goes the other way as well, happy parents, happy children. Jace is doing really well. He loves going to daycare two afternoons a week and playing with other kids. And it’s both good and fun for him to connect with his grandparents. He loves going there. My parents live a bit further away, so we go less often, but usually stay for a few days. I think our little boy is entering a new phase. He’s really discovering that he is his own person, which obviously leads to some confrontations with us now and then. Not easy, but very interesting He was happy when we did our trip to Vienna, Prague and Berlin too though, so this would not be a reason for us to stay in Holland. I think it’s more important for him that we manage to find a new balance.

We need a new plan!

So, what to do? If long-term travel isn’t an option anymore, can we still do shorter trips? Our two-week trip to Vienna, Prague and Berlin in May was great but expensive. Too expensive to do it this way more often. So we need to come up with plans that allow a good combination of shorter-term travel, while still keeping a home base in Holland. Having something to look forward to will do wonders for my motivation, I’m sure. I’m dreading spending the winter here, because the winter blues usually hit me pretty hard. Coming back from sunny Asia to winter temperatures last January wasn’t fun, to say the least. I need sunshine! And destinations that include scuba diving would be a major plus.

More about our ideas for affordable ways for travel short term in our next post!

Booking.com

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I know some people who are starting to itch to go back home after only one week of holiday. Obviously that’s not us. For me the answer to the question above is really simple and my feet are already starting to itch to leave again. But however great traveling is, there are definitely a few things that I won’t miss.

Spending hours on the internet trying to find suitable and affordable accommodation

This has been my nr. 1 grievance and stress factor on this trip. On beforehand I never imagined it would take so much time and energy to find nice places to stay. When we traveled with just the two of us it was never really an issue, but traveling with Jace has changed our accommodation requirements. Not only that, but we want to arrange accommodation before we get there, at least for the first few days. So we’re relying on the internet more than ever before. Since we’ve been moving around at a very fast pace, never staying anywhere longer than a week or two and often even shorter, that meant A LOT of online searching. Of course having a crappy internet connection doesn’t really help, so that’s no. 2 on this list.

Crappy internet connections

Of course we knew internet connections could be bad around Asia, but I never really realised how annoying this can be until I tried maintaining a blog and working while traveling. Also, it sooo much time to search for nice places to stay if you’re internet is so incredibly slow. Sri Lanka and Philippines were definitely the worst.

Diaper hunting

In Holland you can find diapers in all shapes and sizes in any supermarket, but abroad it can be little more complicated. In each country and sometimes even each place we visited we needed to go on a ‘hunt’ for diaper pants. Normal diapers are relatively easy to find, but we quickly found out the pants are more practical and comfortable for an active toddler. It does take some time and persistence to figure out where you can buy them though

Having only one (bed)room for the three of us

We’ve stayed in a few Airbnb apartments with one or sometimes even two bedrooms (luxury!), but mostly we’re staying in hotels and we have only one room for the three of us. Privacy isn’t the biggest issue, but when we don’t have a balcony or other outside space we have to sit in the dark and whisper to each other while Jace is sleeping, both during his nap and in the evening. It’s going to be nice to have a ‘normal’ evening again with him sleeping in his own bedroom.

Always eating out

When we were in Egypt I swore that I would be so happy if I never had to cook another meal in my life. It was quite stressful being responsible for getting food on the table every day and so hard to come up with new dishes with the limited ingredients available there. But, even though I love going out for dinner and getting the chance to try new foods, now that we’ve been eating out almost every night, I really enjoyed the few times that we had an apartment with a kitchen so I could cook myself. So I guess in Holland I’ll have to find a new balance where I get to enjoy cooking again instead of stressing over it and combine it with occasionally going out for dinner.

Hardly having any me-time

One more thing I didn’t realise when we were planning this trip is how little me-time I would have. This is partly my, or maybe our, own fault for the way we’ve organised things. Only when we were diving did we take turns babysitting Jace. Other than that we spend almost every minute with the three of us together. Of course it’s amazing that we got to spend so much time together, but it was also starting to get a bit suffocating at times

Relying on others for transport

I’m very spoiled that in Holland I have my own car and I also have a bike. I’m really looking forward to having my own transport again. It will be so nice not to have to rely on someone else to go somewhere. I can’t drive a motorbike (yet), so in the past months walking was my only option. Of course in Asia taking a taxi, tuktuk, bus, tricycle etc. is cheap and easy, but it’s always someone else driving and I can’t wait to drive again myself.

Too many plastic water bottles

Of course there are tons of countries where you can’t drink the tap water, but in Holland you can. It’s so nice and easy to simply open the tap and fill a glass. I’m really getting a bit fed up with having to buy water every day, not to mention the huge amount of plastic bottles we’re accumulating. We try to get the large 19 liter refillable bottles and even bought a simple pump for them, but it’s not an option if you’re only spending a few days in each location. Luckily in a few places we could refill our bottles from the larger tanks, but still in the past months we’ve used way too much plastic.

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We’ve had this amazing time together as a family and we were really lucky we were able to do this. Although, was it really simply luck? I’d like to think a lot of it was our own doing as well, us saving all these years and daring to take the leap a lot of people only dream about. Some may say I sound ungrateful when I say we ‘have’ to go back because Holland isn’t that bad. And it isn’t, only we’d rather be on the road!

Actually writing this blog post is proving to be quite therapeutical, as it’s helping me come up with ideas of how I want to change things when we get back. So, besides freedom, what else will I miss about being on the road?

On top of my list is definitely SUNSHINE. It’s one thing to feel free and happy when the weather is nice and it stays warm and light until late in the evening, it’s quite another when you return to short, cold, rainy days and long dark nights. The winter season really effects me, unfortunately not in a good way. Even though we’ve visited some places where we needed a sweatshirt or even a jacket, we always knew that the warm weather was only a short ride or flight away. Being outside with our little one all day every day, swimming and having fun in the sun, is definitely something that I’ll miss. I’m not sure what to do about this, but I’m planning for lots of time outside even if it’s cold and wet. And hopefully the occasional short trip to some sunshine if our budget allows.

With unpredictability also comes FLEXIBILITY. You have to be flexible to adapt to new situations that you might find yourself in. Even though we have to be a bit more mature about decisions now that we travel with a toddler, still all three of us have become so much more flexible since we left Holland. Jace is a master at adaptation by now, he’ll sleep everywhere, in a car, on a bus, train or airplane, it doesn’t matter to him anymore. I’m sure I could be lots more flexible, but that’s just not who I am, so I’m happy with what I’ve gained so far and I will do my very best to keep it up.

BEING INDEPENDENT is also a big one. Back home there are so many people making demands on our time and so much outside interference. Lots of people have an opinion of how you should live your life. On the road you can just do your own thing, without anyone telling you what to do, when to do it or where to go. It’s been very liberating being able to live like this for a while. It really made us aware of how much influence (we let) other people have in our lives.

As a control freak having LIMITED CHOICES was also really good for me. You can only bring so much while you’re traveling and even though we still have way too much luggage, there is no room for materialism. If you only have two shorts and three shirts to choose from each morning, life suddenly becomes a lot less complicated. We did buy a few things for Jace, some small toy cars, some clothes, but not much. And for ourselves we have the rule that if we buy new clothing something old has to go. It’s working pretty good so far. It will be a bit overwhelming to have so much random ‘stuff’ again when we get back home and I’m definitely planning to get rid of a lot of it. It not only literally clutters our space, but also our heads.

I will also miss EATING OUT and STAYING IN HOTELS. There are lots of downsides to it (lack of home cooked meals, lack of privacy), but what I like about it is that you don’t have to go grocery shopping, you don’t have to do the dishes and you don’t have to clean your house. I simply don’t enjoy housework. Of course, prices are so much higher in Holland, so financially we could never manage to eat out so often and Maurice generally doesn’t like it because ‘it always takes them so long to serve the food’, but I’m planning on eating out at least once a month. Even if it’s only to keep Jace used to eating in restaurants (good excuse right? ;-)).

Other random things that I’ll miss:
– Cheap fruits and fruit shakes
– Eating freshly cooked food without any preservatives or artificial flavouring
– Riding a motorbike with the three of us
– Stunning nature and amazing animal life
– Scuba diving in amazing tropical places

So, there’s my list. It’s become a bit personal, but I hope you don’t mind. Even though it’s depressing to think about all the amazing things that I’ll miss when this trip is over, it was also a great exercise for me. Instead of getting stuck in depressing thoughts, I’m now focussing on all the positive changes I want to make in my and our lives when we get back to Holland!

The post 12 things I’ll miss when this Big Adventure is over appeared first on FlipFlopGlobetrotters.com.

We’re now in the ninth month of our Big Adventure and so far it’s been great. Of course it wasn’t always easy and there have been challenges, but we’re loving life on the road. If we could find a way to make enough money while traveling I think it would suit all three of us really well to travel indefinitely.

However, due to the declining health of my mother in law, who’s was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to cut our trip short. Unfortunately, our health is not something we have control over and we feel it’s more important for Mau to be home, to spend time with his mom and to help his dad and his brother where possible. And for Jace to spend time with his grandmother. So we’re now looking into booking tickets back to Holland at the beginning of February, two months earlier than planned.

From the beginning, we said we wanted to stay away for a full year if our budget would allow it. So far we’ve spent much more than planned, but financially we could have made it until the end of March 2016. That’s what we always had in mind. So going home two months early feels like we’re leaving before the end, like our trip isn’t really finished yet. We still had so many plans and things we wanted to see. Also, neither of us is looking forward to being back in cold and wet Holland again and we were really hoping to skip the winter. Let’s just hope that Jace can adjust to life back in Holland as easily as he’s been soaking up all new experiences these past months. And that we can adjust again too, which might prove even more difficult.

Since we’ve only had so much ‘work’ time while we were traveling, we still have tons of things to write about and millions of photo’s to sort through, so FlipFlopGlobetrotters will continue! Also, hopefully, continuing to write about our experiences will work therapeutically and help us keep the traveling feeling alive even when we’re back in Holland again. Of course, we’ll still continue to travel, even if in the foreseeable future we’ll most likely not go away again for such a long time. So you’ll hear more about traveling to European destinations and things to do in our hometown Haarlem. And about how we’re coping with being back home again after such a long journey. Even a bit closer to home there’s still so much to discover! And traveling with a toddler is never dull

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