Trip to Holland Tulip tulip everywhere - 05/07/2005

"Deekha eik khawaab to yeh silsile hue.... Door tak nigahoon main hain yeh gul khile hue....."

Remember the song from movie "silsila" where they have shown tulip gardens..

This weekend (7th May - Saturday) decided to go on trip to Holland (yeh.. holland.. as in H.. O.. L.. L... A.. N... D.. :-) ).. Whomsoever I mentioned this asked me one thing "What about Visa". So before you ask will tell you. Holland is a city in Michigan situated in Lake Michigan. This city is inhabited by Dutch people and thats why the name Holland. It is no different then any other actual Holland city.. Things are pretty much same.

It is 3 hours drive from Detroit and we started (after some initial delays.. as usual :D) in morning.. This time it is going to be one day trip only..

As Tulip time festival was also starting on same day (Tulip time festival is one of USA'a top festivals to be in. http://www.tuliptime.com/) This festival starts with start of Spring as this is time when Tulips starts blooming.. Its the best time to see tulips without going to well Holland or Canada (canada also has lots of tulips in some cities).....

As soon as we reached the city we started seieng tulips everywhere.. in front of houses on streets..
We first went to windmill islad. This place has an actual original working Windmill imported form Holland (before Holland nationalised windmills which prohibits takking them out of the country). This mill still runs and grind wheat to flour :-). It also was having lots and lots of tulips and lotsssss of varieties and diffreent colors of tulips.. atmospehere was all mela types as we have in india :-).. I tried all my photgraphy skills :P taking pictures of all tulips and all I can take. Besides windmill is a small farm where tehy have lanted tulips in a rows.. just as we seen in movies :-) It was soooooooooooooo beautifull.. Lots of tulips and lots of colors.. Just wanted to pluck some, but kya karoon US main apna indian ishtlye phool toodna nahin chalta hia :P... We spent lots of time in the graden and seeing around the place..

From windmill island we then went to holland downtown. In the city streets they have planted tulips everywhere.. ots around 6 mile routes where we can walk and see tulips all around :-) There was tulip tram service which takes around the place, but unfortunaley (or say fortunaletly) it was all booked.. So we walked around the strrets ourselves :-) There is one Cenntanial Park also where all tyoes of tulips they have planted. We missed the Dance performance there :'( but we were able to take snaps along with some performers :D

It was time to move on to next destination.. "Dutch Village". This place they have put up everything related to holland in small place. good place to experiance how thinkgs work out and how they live there.. how they do things.. here again we missed dance performance :( but were able to see how they make wooden shoes. yes in holland still 1 million people wear wood shoes. It all started some centuries back when they once had scarcity of leather and someone came up with idea of making shoes made out of wood :-). We also saw "making of was candles"... not normal candles which we have but artistic candles.. (last of the pics are of those - taken from mobile as battery of camera got drained out) they make these beautiful candles in just 15-20 mins (before the wax gets cold) and we saw its making from start till end.. they are really fast in making those.. and color combinations and all are really too good :-)..

As sun was setting we have to start our journey back home. But this journey also was excellent one and worth everything :-).... have missed out going to tulip farm (commercial farm - having millions of tulips)..., So will plan again another trip to this great place..