Tag: windmills

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search of Tulips and Windmills – April 29, 2026

Where We Stand In A Tulip Field and Have A Photo Op With A Windmill

Today we are in Enkhuizen. The morning’s excursion was a walking city tour. I decided to opt out of it to let my knee rest a bit. But Andy went.

Here are some of the photos he took. It looks like a nice town.

Andy is eating a herring. He said it tasted good.
Drommedaris Tower – an historic defense tower since 1540
Statue of 17th century Dutch painter, Paulus Potter
Gate to the Drommedaris Tower
Waterfront
Canals
Canals
Stadhuis
Coat of arms on the front facade of the Stadhuis
Zuiderkerk a/k/a Sint-Pantcraskerk
City street
Narrow street
Plaque to Ella Fitzgerald

After lunch we went on out “Tulips and Windmill” excursion. This week is the very end of tulip season in the Netherlands. You can tell – the tulips are starting to wilt.

We drove about 40 minutes to a commercial tulip farm. Our guide told us that for most of the tulip flowers have been removed from the tulip plants at this point to encourage the bulbs to grow large and healthy. But we did see a couple of tulip fields along the way.

At the farm we first had coffee/tea and cookies (the cookies were very good), followed by a presentation by the tulip farmer’s wife. Today was the last presentation to a Viking cruise for the season. She walked us through the tulip production cycle including producing bulbs for sale and cut flowers. There are machines for most everything, but there are steps in the process that still must be done by hand. They hire seasonal workers – most of them from Poland – and provide them housing on the farm for the season. As of tomorrow, her husband and his crew will drive through the tulip fields with a machine that will harvest all the flowers and leave the rest of the plant to nourish the bulb.

We were able to walk into the tulip fields, which is a rare opportunity. Even though you can tell that the flowers are wilting, they are still spectacularly beautiful.

Here we are posing with the tulips. We are crouching, because the person who took the photo wanted to make sure we in the photo with the flowers. You can tell it was a windy day, because my hair is all over the place.

On the way back from the tulip farm to the ship, we had a photo op with a functional windmill. The mill wasn’t working while we were there, but it can and does grind wheat into flour.

So we have seen tulip fields and our first windmill.

A couple of sunset shots:

Tomorrow: Arnhem