I love tulips. There. Now you know. When I got married, I wanted to have a tulip bouquet. Sadly, they were out of season. So, no tulips at my wedding. But I still love tulips.

When I moved to Germany, I knew I was moving close to the Netherlands (home of the tulip). I was excited. I was even more excited to find out about an event called the Floriade. The Floriade is an international exhibition of flowers and gardening (think botanical garden, but on steroids). It’s held once every 10 years in the Netherlands. And in 2012 it was being held in Venlo, Netherlands. Now, if a gardening event is supposed to feature over a million flowering bulbs (the tulip is a bulb) surely there would be tulips all over the place. Right? Wrong! I did not see one tulip. Not a single one. I was taken aback.

These boots greeted us before we entered the park

Wait…wasn’t this the home of the tulip? Where were they? I actually don’t remember seeing that many plants at all. They had some plants set up in some of the buildings, but I don’t remember seeing any flowers.

So, what did we see? We saw some dancers (I still don’t know why they were there). We were able to ride the longest cable car in the Netherlands (it was 3600 feet long), and we were able to buy a magnet at a gift shop. But no tulips.

Dancers

Cable cars

I believe the gift shop is in this area…or a restaurant

So, our first time in the Netherlands was a bust. Sure, I was disappointed, but we can laugh about it…now.