Day 9, Keukenhof, Holland, The Netherlands

Our last day in Germany. We got up very early and left the house by 6:30. We drove through Germany and cut across Belgium on the way to the Netherlands. After taking a 1-hour rest stop just as we got into the Netherlands, we drove 2 more hours to Lieden where our hotel was. Boy, did Robert pick a nice Holiday Inn. The inside was like an atrium which was right over the balcony from our 3rd story rooms. After we got checked in and had some lunch, we drove to Keukenhof to the tulip festival. On the way there, we saw acres and acres of tulips, just like our corn fields, all along the road. It was beautiful. At the festival you can’t even imagine how many hundreds of different kinds of flowers there were, let alone the thousands of colors and varieties. It was such a sight. I would love to bring Grandma Hatch here. She would think she was in Heaven. Hopefully our pictures will do it some justice. We didn’t take too many pictures, but Robert and Jim, along with Melanie and Carolyn, took 100s of pictures. Steve and I had a Belgian waffle, his with cherries, mine with strawberries, yummy. We bought a few souvenirs and then after spending over 3 hours there we went back to the hotel where we ordered some pizza and ate in Jim and Carolyn’s room. The hotel had a buffet but it cost 30 Euro which is about 40 dollars. Crazy. After dinner, Melanie, Robert, Steve and the kids went swimming. I put the  baby down to bed. I knew I wouldn’t be able to really play in the pool because my shoulder is really giving me trouble. After they were done I took a long, hot bath. The bathtub in our room was the best tub I have ever been in. It was long and it had a great back and head rest. I was in heaven. I’ve really been missing my hot-tub so this felt really good. 

Funny story from last night. When Robert took Steve and I onto the base, Steve went to the ATM to get more Euro. When it came time to enter the amount, Steve hit dollars, by habit, not Euro. So he got all this cash in dollars (which we did not need). He tried to do it again to get Euro but the card was denied because he was over the withdrawal limit for the day (we had already gotten some out earlier that morning). He came back saying he was a dumb dork. When he told Robert, Melanie, and I what he had done, we just cracked up laughing.